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A.    OLUTE     CRITICISM  ^^ 


The  ■'■''"        -'r.       By 


->        SPENSEK  .^,^^_^, 

la,meg 

zas ; 
ibiicatioi  l^Q^gh 

logy.     Berkeley,  U.S.A.     The  University  Press.  |1.)       ticism 

Mr.  Cory,  avowedly  in  quest  of  the  "  absolute  method  of    »  ,, 
criticism,"  provides  us  with  an  illuminating  experiment.    He  .     , 
attempts  to  put  before  us  the  true  estimate  of  Spenser  by  a  ,     ,. -. 
comparative  study  of  the  judgments  that  literary  criticism         .  , 
has  produced  during  the  three  centuries  since   the  poet's  , 

time.     He  is  of  course  fortunate  in  his  example,  for  few  of '    „,, 
the  great  English  writers  have  endured  the  whole  history       . 
of  English  Literary  Criticism,  or  have  weathered  the  chang- '        .' 
ing  climates  of  so  many  eras  and  thought-movements.     We     ^  ^  ' 
stand  now  at  a  very  convenient  remove  from  Spenser's  day,    ..       ' 
and  it  would  be  a  much  more  difficult,  if  equally  fascinating,  ,' 

task  to  determine  in  like  manner  the  quality,  say,  of  Brown-  , 

ing,  or  even  of  Shelley.     Nevertheless,  that  the  method  is  , 

instructive  and  valuable  appears  abundantly  in  the  course  of    ' 
Mr.  Cory's  present  study.  ^  . 

Criticism  is  apt  to  be  biassed  not  only  by  the  individual ^   p  ii 
taste  of  the  critic,  but  also  by  that  indefinable  Zeitgeist  which  ^  ^^    . 
works  so  subtly  in  all  ages.     The  very  qualities  which  are         , 
the  worship  of  one  age  are  often  the  execration  of  the  next. '  . 
Spenser's  poetry  was  born  in  what  the  essayist  calls  the  Age        ^     ,' 
of  Enthusiasm.     It  was  the  dawn  of  a  National  Literature,  ^^     , 
when    anything   English   was   greeted   with   whole-hearted' 
praise.     There  is  scarcely  a  dissonant  note,  therefore,  in  all  7^^   , 
the  chorus  of  adulation  which  characterises  the  period  imme- 
diately succeeding  Spenser's  own  time.     It  is  extravagant 
with  a  unanimity  that  is   nowadays   rare.      One    admirer 
places  him  forthright  with   Theocritus   and   Virgil,    while  l  Spenser 
another  pits  him  bravely  against  the  world;  even  shrewd  with  the 
Drayton  couples  him  with  Homer.  link  this 

Then,  as  a  natural  reaction,  comes  an  Age  of  Reason,  when  ©verse  of 
the  real  spirit  of  criticism  awakes.  Rugged  Ben  Jonson  ^mporary 
leads  the  way,  and  Spenser's  archaisms,  his  disregard  of  the  "*^^y  ^^ 
caesura,  his  didactic  tone,  and  his  allegorical  method,  all  ^^'  .  ® 
come  in  for  adverse  discussion.  The  break-up  of  the  old  ®P^®^^^^ 
ideals  follows  with  what  Mr.  Cory  distinguishes  as  the  Age  , 

of  Literary  Anarchy.     He  makes  the  chaos  of  this  period        ^■,  i^ 
the  subject  of  a  piquant  parallel : —  rr-    g^g^^ 

It  is  a  breach  of  decorum  now  to  try  to  believe  less  than  ^  "educed 
five  conflicting  theories  at  once.  .  .  .  Science  has'^®  admire 
destroyed  religion,  we  wail.  But  never  was  the  world  so  full  ^^^^}  ^^^" 
of  creeds,  innumerable  variations  of  Christianity,  the  ^iiction  of 
worship  of  mankind,  the  worship  of  the  superman,  the 
worship  of  the  Unknown  God,  neo-paganism,  the  religion  of  iricanism, 
a  literary  man,  the  religion  of  an  undergraduate,  the  reli-  are  mis- 
'  gioii  of  the  free-thinking  proprietor  of  a  country  grocery  ga,y  hides 
store.  We  have  a  magnificent  choice.  We  preach  ^^i  flaws 
demcaracy  and  practise  oligarchy.  .  .  .  Never  was  the  [j^terested 
hun^an  mind  in  a  more  active  and  a  more  healthy  state.     So 


return   as  to  deserve  a  continuance  of  her   kindness,  a 
"*  (         is    ill    health    had  very  much  affected    hi'?         • 
iig,  yet  he  had  still  enough  to  make  him  i 

'.       /are  she  had   of  him,  and  there  is  nothing        /i^  - 
.    _^i  ,j>^e  as  the  parting  with  an  old  friend.  ..     .^^ 

The  book  is   embellished  with  many  good  pox  A^aHs. 
genealogical    tree    showing    the    connection    between 
William  Temple  and  Lord  Palmerston  closes  the  volui 
with  which  one  is  sincerely  sorry  to  part. 


A     HANDBOOK     OF     GOTHIC     ART 

Oothic  Architecture  in  England   and   France.     By  the  R 
G.  H.  West.     (G.  Bell  and  Sons.     6s.  net.) 

In  the  preface  this  book  is  described  as  a  handbook  rat! 

than  an  encyclopaedia.     Its  author  is  a  clergyman,  and  a 

an  architect.     Its  essential  feature  is  an  appreciation  of 

historic   parallelism   of    Gothic  methods   in   England    i 

France,  including  a  comparison  of  the  divergencies  in  des 

and  detail  of  Gothic  structures  in  the  allied  countries.     G 

introduction  contains  an  interesting  discussion  of  the  p 

blem   of  church   building   from   the  point   of   view  of 

material  locally  available.     Owing  to   the   difficulties   i 

cost    of     transport,    the    early    architect    was,    of    coui 

largely  dependent  on  the  district  of  his  labours  for  the  i 

material  to  be  used  in  construction.     In  cases  in  which  th 

obstacles  were  overcome,  and  exotic  stone,  &c.,  were  employ 

we  have  evidence  of  growing  wealth  and  enterprise.     1 

present  writer  has  at  the  moment  to  deal  with  the  probl 

of  constructing  a  railway  in  close  vicinity  to  a  noble  Got 

cathedral.     His  first  glance  at  Mr.  West's  book  was  the 

fore  to  see   if  the   word   "  foundations "   occurred  in 

Index.       It    does  not,    and  the    author    is    silent    on  t 

branch  of  his  subject.     It  may  perhaps  be  argued  that 

design  of  typical  structures  does  not  necessarily  involv 

discussion  of  the  varying  conditions  of  platform  on  wh 

such  structures  are  intended  to  rest.     Part  I.  of  the  b< 

consists  of  four  admirable  chapters  devoted  to   details 

design.     In  Part  II.  the  author  attacks  his  subject  from 

historical  side.     With  great  skill  he  draws  the  moral  of 

inbred  idealism  of  the  Latin  race  type,  as  reflected  in  Fre: 

Gothic   architecture,   comparing   this   with  the    invetei 

makeshift  of  the  Teuton,   as  illustrated   by  correspond 

church   work  on   this  side   of   the  Channel.     The  auth< 

nearest  approach  to  a  definition  of  the  principles  of  Got 

art  is  given  on  page  199,  where  he  states  four  canons  of  c 

atruction,  in  which  he  says  the  race  characteristics  of 

Norman  builder  are  enshrined.     Few  will  agree  with  A. 

CloucT^ 

<  ome,  leave  your  Gothic  worn-out  st^^ry,         ^■ 
an  Giorgio  and  the  Eedentore, 
from  no  building  gay  or  solemn 

Jan  spare  the  shapely  Grecian  column. 


it  was  at  the  close  of  the  sevente' 
lujah !  "  shouted  the  Elizabethaus.    '    ;• 
the  rationaUsts.     After  that  the  dehige. 

Many  distinct  schools  began- to  form,  :  een  thelfi  all 

Spenser's  importance  begins  to  wane  ;  ^vitts  i\\e  emergence, 
of  Dry  den,  however,  comes  a  more  distinct  note.  He  blames 
Spenser's  lack  of  unity,  and  the  **  ill  choice  of  his  stanzas  ;  " 
but  judges  him  "  established  in  "  his  "  reputation,"  though 
here  again  the  queer  distortion  of  contemporary  criticism 
appears  in  his  naming  Waller  as  superior  to  Spenser. 

The  interest  of  the  subject  deepens  with  the  rise  of  the 
Neo-Classicism.  Mr.  Cory  claims  that  Spenser  exercised  a 
greater  influence  on  the  Augustans  than  he  afterwards  did 
on  the  Romanticists  ;  in  reality  each  age  took  only  a  partial 
view  of  the  poet — that,  of  course,  which  best  suited  it — and 
it  is  curious  to  compare  the  respective  judgments.  The 
Neo-Classicists  emphasised  beauties  in  Spenser  that  were  lost 
on  the  Romanticists,  The  former  loved  his  fidelity  to  Virgil, 
and  deplored  his  "  debauchery  "  by  Ariosto  ;  while  the  latter, 
when  their  day  came,  praised  him  for  his  debt  to  the  Italians, 
and  regretted  his  Latin  "  blemishes."  His  didactic  tone  and 
his  allegorical  method  are  his  chief  excellences  to  the 
Augustans.  But  when  the  Romantic  Revival  came,  the 
boot  was  on  the  other  leg.  He  is  now  sought  "  rather  as  a 
poet  of  ardent  emotion  and  sensuous  glow  than  as  a  poet  of 
vast  moral  visions  "  ;  his  appeal  is  to  the  "  feelings  of  the 
heart  rather  than  the  cold  approbation  of  the  head."  He  is 
even  conceived  as  a  true  Romanticist  blushing  for  his  enthu- 
siasm, and  cloaking  his  romance  in  morals  to  hide  his  shame. 

There  is  no  attempt  at  a  conclusive  summary  or  final 
statement  on  the  part  of  the  essayist ;  he  leaves  the  reader 
to  form  his  own  judgment.  His  own  leanings,  however,  are 
sufficiently  apparent.  He  has  no  sympathies  with  the 
modern  cult  of  VArt  pour  VArt :  indeed,  he  often  pauses  to 
launch  a  bolt  at  the  doctrine. 

Our  present-day  romanticists  sometimes  look  upon  Si)enser 
askance  because  of  his  idealism,  and  sum  it  up  with  the 
accusation  that  he  has  no  human  interest.  They  think  this 
because  present-day  romanticism  often  means  the  reverse  of 
idealism.  .  .  .  It  is  certainly  true  that  contemporary 
romanticists  need  a  revival  of  sentimentalism  as  badly  as 
the  eighteenth  century,  though  for  a  different  reason.  The 
Augustans  were  hard  because  they  believed  in  repression 
and  glittering  reason.  Present-day  romanticists  are  hard 
because  they  are  jaded  and  do  not  respond  to  normal 
emotions.  And  better  for  us  than  sentimentalism  would  be 
the  beautiful  idealism  of  Edmund  Spenser.  His  sweet 
leisureliness  would  cure  us  of  our  literary  dyspepsia  induced 
by  our  breathless  short- story  technique  which  we  admire 
with  such  blind  exclusiveness.  His  profound  moral  con- 
sciousness would  impress  us  again  with  the  high  function  of 
poetry  and  make  us  laugh  at  Art  for  Art's  sake. 

We  are  occasionally  startled  by  a  queer  Americanism, 
such  as  "  disgruntled  "  (!)  and  "  nearby."  There  are  mis- 
prints on  pp.  125,  133,  and  134 — where  Allan  Ramsay  hides 
under  the  alias  of  "  Aamsay  ;  "  but  these  are  small  flaws, 
and  the  essay  is  well  worth  reading  to  all  who  are  interested 
in  literary  criticism. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  PUBLICATIONS 

IN 

MODERN    PHILOLOGY 

Vol.  2,  No.  2,  pp.  81-t82  June  30,  1911 


THE  CRITICS  OF  EDMUND  SPENSER 


BY 

HERBERT  E.  CORY 


BERKELEY 

THE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 


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Vol.  2,  No.  2,  pp.  81-182  June  30,  191 1 


THE   CRITICS  OF  EDMUND  SPENSER 


BY 

HEEBEET  E.  COEY. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.  Absolute  Criticism.     A  Foreword  81 

II.  The  Age  of  Enthusiasm  and  Spenser-Worship 89 

III.  The  Age  of  Eeason  and  the  Eise  of  Literary  Criticism  98 

rV.  The  Age  of  Literary  Anarchy  106 

V.  The  Neo-Classical  Despotism  127 

VI.  The  Triumph  of  Eomanticism  159 


ABSOLUTE  CRITICISM.    A  FOREWORD 

No  age,  by  its  own  resources  alone,  can  appreciate  the  many 
sides  of  a  supreme  poet.  How  can  we  then  escape  from  the  nar- 
rowness of  our  times  and  gain  a  really  large  and  adequate  appre- 
ciation of  our  Titans?  For  some  time  I  have  been  meditating 
upon  an  absolute  method  in  criticism — a  scheme  by  which  our 
own  estimate  of  a  poet  may  be  modified  and  enriched  through 
a  study  of  his  critics  in  the  ages  previous  to  our  own.  We  can- 
not test  the  poet  and  our  glittering  generalities  by  the  superior 
wisdom  of  unborn  generations.  But  we  can  subject  our  ideas  to 
a  most  severe  examination  in  the  light  of  the  wisdom  of  a  spacious 
past — a  wisdom  which  I  do  not  think,  despite  my  belief  in  human 
progress,  will  be  ever  improved  in  fundamentals  as  long  as 


2t(lRao 


82  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

mankind  has  the  fundamental  habits  of  loving,  hating,  and  of 
occasionally  enjoying  poetry.  Spenser,  for  instance,  will  be  thor- 
oughly appreciated  for  the  first  time  when  we  learn  what  the  men 
of  consequence  in  his  own  days  and  since  have  thought  of  him 
and  when  we  place  our  own  ideas,  warped  by  our  times  and  our 
personalities,  in  a  proper  perspective.  But  I  hear  a  still,  small 
voice  saying  that  even  this  cannot  be  absolute  criticism,  that  my 
investigations  cannot  be  absolutely  exhaustive,  that  I  cannot 
absolutely  escape  from  my  own  personality.  I  recognize  the 
the  presence  of  this  voice,  but  I  scorn  it.  In  an  age  whose  chief 
disease  is  doubt  I  will  not  administer  to  the  widespread  evil  by 
apologizing  for  the  grandiloquence  of  my  phrase — absolute 
criticism.  Nor  am  I  tormented  by  the  popular  disease  of  the 
academic  mind,  the  absurd  worry  as  to  whether  my  idea  of  abso- 
lute criticism  is  old  or  new.  The  only  thing  that  disturbs  me  is 
that  absolute  criticism,  because  it  involves  some  dreary  citation, 
partakes  too  much  of  the  nature  of  the  catalogue  to  be  as  pleas- 
urable and  therefore  as  profitable  as  impressionistic  criticism. 
Yet  I  believe  that  my  method  has  a  right  to  exist  as  a  sister  of 
the  more  artistic  method.  I  purpose,  therefore,  to  recount  the 
history  of  Spenserian  criticism  and  its  significance  in  relation  to 
our  opinion  of  Spenser  to-day. 

Of  the  Golden  Age  of  English  literature,  the  Age  of  Enthu- 
siasm, I  will  say  little,  for  the  moment,  because  it  is  well  under- 
stood by  all  lovers  of  good  English  books.  Volcanic  floods  of 
rhetoric  on  the  subject  now  harden  and  glisten  in  countless 
volumes.  It  is  enough  to  remember  that  in  the  spacious  days  of 
Queen  Elizabeth  Shakespeare  made  the  splendors  of  English 
history  move  in  a  vast,  heroic  pageant  across  a  little  wooden 
stage.  It  was  the  age  of  Spenser-worship  because  the  English 
worshipped  everything  English.  It  has  long  been  a  popular 
superstition  among  the  ignorant  and  the  learned  that  great  poets 
are  not  appreciated  in  their  own  day.  It  is  true,  as  I  have  said, 
that  they  are  not  completely  appreciated,  but  nothing  could  be 
more  ill-supported  by  evidence  than  the  notion  that  they  are  not 
appreciated  by  contemporaries  within  certain  limits.    It  is.  true 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  83 

that  the  world  often  allows  a  great  poet  to  go  threadbare  because 
the  w^orld  has  a  disgusting  habit  of  being  loth  to  pay  for 
what  it  can  get  free.  But  the  world  is  always  liberal  in  the 
appreciation  of  great  poets,  even  in  their  own  age.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  poets  are  generally  more  heartily  if  less  shrewdly  appre- 
ciated in  their  own  day  than  later.  Shakespeare,  for  instance, 
when  we  make  due  allowance  for  the  freer  intercourse  of  nations 
and  the  increase  of  cheap  editions  and  text-books  was  much  more 
widely  appreciated  in  his  own  day  than  in  this.  He  is  a  fairly 
popular  poet  now  except  with  certain  critics  who  have  grown 
ashamed  of  our  sturdy  English  worship  and  who  point  out,  with 
breathless  pseudo-radicalism,  the  faults  that  we  all  have  long 
known  and  indulgently  loved.  For  thousands  he  is  a  delectable 
bundle  of  aphorisms.  Whether  the  words  are  taken  from  the 
mouth  of  Desdemona  or  lago,  Hamlet  or  Polonius,  they  are 
quoted  as  Scripture  with  that  damnable  label,  **  Shakespeare 
says — '\  But  compare  with  these  days  when  Shakespeare  is  occas- 
ionally ' '  revived ' '  on  the  stage  the  times  when  Shakespeare  was  a 
living  force  in  the  theatres,  when  he  was  talked  about  in  the 
adjoining  stews,  when  his  words  held  fine  nobles  and  dirty 
apprentices,  when,  despite  the  jealousies  of  the  craft,  he  was 
loved  by  many  a  fellow-writer.  Take  another  example.  For  a 
long  time  the  misanthrope  could  tell  us,  with  cloudy  brow,  how 
insignificant  was  the  fame  of  Milton  in  his  own  day.  But  recent 
scholarship  has  dispelled  the  fantasy.  Provided  that  a  poet  is 
supreme,  provided  that  his  worth  is  dazzlingly  undeniable,  the 
world  has  always  been  ready  to  nourish  a  starving  poet  with 
appreciation  to  the  choking  point.  Now  Phineas  Fletcher  wrote  a 
rhetorical  alexandrine  about  Spenser  which  runs : 

*' Poorly — poore  man — he  liv'd;  poorly — poore  man — he  di'd" 
And  Ben  Jonson,  when  he  was  delightfully  sour  and  fantastical, 
told  Drummond  wild  tales  of  Spenser's  poverty  and  misery. 
Many  more  spread  the  myths.  Hence  some  students  of  English 
literature  have  taken  it  for  granted  that  Spenser  was  of  little 
consequence  to  his  contemporaries.  Whether  Spenser  could  rea- 
sonably complain  to  his  empty  purse  is  a  matter  which  biogra- 


84  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

phers  have  yet  to  settle.  But  I  will  show  presently  that  it  was 
the  age  of  Spenser-worship  as  it  was  the  age  of  worship  of  all 
things  English. 

Then  came  the  Age  of  Reason,  and  England  developed  a  real 
literary  criticism  for  the  first  time.  When  we  find  Davenant  and 
others  complaining  about  certain  defects  in  the  Faerie  Queene  we 
must  not  say,  as  some  have  said,  that  Spenser  had  fallen  into  the 
hands  of  the  Philistines.  We  must  ask  ourselves  whether  these 
censors  had  not  just  cause  for  complaint  and  whether  their  appre- 
ciation, if  less  wildly  enthusiastic,  was  not  more  true  for  all  time. 
Of  course  we  cannot  date  the  Age  of  Reason  or  any  other  age. 
We  can  only  say  vaguely  that  Ben  Jonson  of  the  rocky  face  and 
mountain  belly  stood  like  a  rock  of  reason  in  the  very  midst  of 
the  turbulent  ocean  of  enthusiasm,  scarred,  sullen,  but  immov- 
able, a  prophet  of  the  age  at  hand.  We  can  only  say  that  by 
about  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  the  seas  of  enthus- 
iasm were  stagnant  and  the  rock  of  reason  stood  dominant  but  not 
triumphant.  For  reason  has  no  feelings  and  therefore  never 
triumphs.  England  needed  an  Age  of  Reason  to  develop  literary 
criticism  as  an  art.  And  many  of  the  words  written  about 
Spenser  in  those  days  will  enrich  our  appreciation  of  the  master. 

But  England  had  to  pay  the  inevitable  penalty  for  her  Age 
of  Reason.  When  reason  comes  in  at  the  window  faith  is  rather 
likely  to  fly  out  at  the  door.  I  think  we  may  better  understand 
the  currents  of  English  literature  in  the  latter  half  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  if  we  call  it  the  Age  of  Literary  Anarchy.  We 
can  understand  if  we  think  for  a  moment  of  our  own  age.  The 
Romantic  Age  was  a  time  of  great  faiths.  Now  if  mankind  is  to 
progress  all  faiths  must  be  tried  in  the  balance.  So  we  had  a 
Victorian  Age  of  reason  and  doubt.  Now  we  have  an  age  of 
intellectual  anarchy.  It  is  a  breach  of  decorum  now  to  try  to 
believe  less  than  five  conflicting  theories  at  once.  It  is  unpardon- 
able to  suppose  that  theory  and  practice  have  the  remotest  rela- 
tions. Science  has  destroyed  religion,  we  wail.  But  never  was 
the  world  so  full  of  creeds,  innumerable  variations  of  Chris- 
tianity, the  worship  of  mankind,  the  worship  of  the  superman, 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  85 

the  worship  of  the  Unknown  God,  neo-paganism,  the  religion  of  a 
literary  man,  the  religion  of  an  undergraduate,  the  religion  of 
the  free-thinking  proprietor  of  a  country  grocery  store.  We  have 
a  magnificent  choice.  We  preach  democracy  and  practice 
oligarchy.  We  believe  in  socialism  after  a  frugal  breakfast  and 
after  an  eight-course  dinner  we  call  it  twaddle.  Never  was  the 
human  mind  in  a  more  active  and  a  more  healthy  state.  So  it 
was  at  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century.  ''Hallelujah!" 
shouted  the  Elizabethans.  **But  hold,"  murmured  the  ration- 
alists. After  that,  the  deluge.  There  was  the  same  confusion  in 
theories  of  literature  that  there  was  in  polities.  There  was  the 
same  deafening  discord  in  matters  religious.  Dry  den,  as  we 
shall  see,  epitomizes  the  age.  I  should  like  to  cast  a  vote  for 
Dryden  's  much-debated  sincerity.  Men  changed  creeds,  literary, 
political,  and  religious,  every  day  not  only  for  reasons  of  policy 
but  because  they  could  not  honestly  cling  long  to  one  faith.  A 
man  dogmatized  on  page  one  and  roundly  contradicted  himself  on 
page  two  because  it  was  an  age  of  anarchy.  There  was  a  score  of 
schools,  sometimes  sharply  separated,  sometimes  overlapping.  We 
often  talk  of  our  Augustan  Age  as  though  it  was  established  by 
Waller  or  Denham  or  Dryden.  But  before  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, classicism  in  England  struggled  desperately  for  a  bare 
existence  against  a  horde  of  foes.  Even  in  the  days  of  Pope,  clas- 
sicism never  attained  the  splendid  perfection  and  unity  that  we 
find  in  France  when  Racine  and  Boileau  reigned.  And  before 
Pope  what  a  riot  there  was!  Think  of  Henry  More  and  the 
Cambridge  Platonists  losing  a  noble  cause  against  Hobbes  and 
the  materialists.  Think  of  Bunyan,  inconsistency  incarnate,  with 
his  intense  hopes  and  fears,  at  the  beck  and  call  of  the  least  mood 
of  the  moment.  It  was  the  age  when  Locke  could  write  that  man 
*'must  not  be  in  love  with  an  opinion,  or  wish  it  to  be  true,  until 
he  knows  it  to  be  so,  and  then  he  will  not  need  to  wish  it."  Mil- 
ton, in  his  maturest  days,  kept  scornfully  aloof  from  the  restless 
yeas  and  nays  of  the  age  and  chose  his  ideals  with  calm,  sure 
certainty.  Samuel  Butler,  a  child  of  the  age,  sought  cheap 
refuge  from  the  bewildering  maze  of  opinions  in  indiscriminate 
mockery.    Dryden,  another  child  of  the  age,  groped  about  like  all 


86  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.    [Vol.  2 

the  others,  hesitated,  professed,  recanted,  dallied  with  neo-classi- 
cism,  almost  returned  to  Elizabethanism,  and  at  last  struggled  to 
a  position  not  as  high  as  Milton's  but  above  his  age  and  the  next. 
Lyric  poets  like  Sedley  and  Rochester  showed  the  complete 
Pyrrhonism  of  the  age  by  their  attitude  toward  love.  Love  could 
bring  them  no  Vita  Nuova,  no  white  faith  to  lead  them  to  the 
fulfillment  of  vast  enterprise.  It  was  their  lot  to  write  of  false 
love  or  love  which  they  knew  to  be  already  on  the  wing.  Cowley, 
Sprat,  Waller,  Dryden,  and  others  convened  to  form  an  Academy 
that  would  dispel  the  murky  anarchy  in  letters.  But  nothing 
came  of  it. 

Then  came  the  Augustan  Despotism.  Wise  scholars  are 
slowly  and  painfully  teaching  us  to  appreciate  how  much  the  neo- 
classicists  did  for  England  when  they  finally  brought  a  faith  to 
the  tortured  sceptics  and  the  hundred  jarring  sects.  But  it  will 
take  time  to  right  the  wrongs  inflicted  by  the  great  Romanticists 
in  their  splendid  youth.    For  Keats  wrote  of  the  Augustans : 

"Yes,  a  seism 
Nurtured  by  foppery  and  barbarism, 
Made  great  Apollo  blush  for  this  his  land. 
Men  were  thought  men  who  could  not  understand 
His  glories:  with  a  puling  infant's  force 
They  sway'd  about  upon  a  rocking  horse, 
And  thought  it  Pegasus.    Ah  dismal  soul'd! 
The  winds  of  heaven  blew,  the  ocean  roll'd 
Its  gathering  waves — ye  felt  it  not.     The  blue 
Bar'd  its  eternal  bosom,  and  the  dew  "  ■ 

Of  summer  nights  collected  still  to  make 
The  morning  precious;  beauty  was  awake! 
Why  were  ye  not  awake?     But  ye  were  dead 
To  things  ye  knew  not  of, — were  closely  wed 
To  musty  laws  lined  out  with  wretched  rule 
And  compass  vile:  so  that  ye  taught  a  school 
Of  dolts  to  smooth,  inlay,  and  clip,  and  fit. 
Till,  like  the  certain  wands  of  Jacob's  wit. 
Their  verses  tallied.     Easy  was  the  task; 
A  thousand  handicraftsmen  wore  the  mask 
Of  Poesy.    Ill-fated,  impious  race! 
That  blasphem  'd  the  bright  Lyrist  to  his  face, 
And  did  not  know  it, — no,  they  went  about. 
Holding  a  poor,  decrepid  standard  out 
Mark'd  with  most  flimsy  mottos,  and  in  large 
The  name  of  one  Boileau!" 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  87 

Of  course  there  is  much  truth  in  this  glorious  abuse.  Neverthe- 
less we  are  beginning  to  see  that  after  all  the  Augustans  were  not 
heavy  villains  but  very  useful  ancestors.  Their  apologists,  how- 
ever, still  make  the  mistake  of  thinking  that  they  are  not  worth 
while  unless  they  contain  some  symptoms  of  romanticism,  real 
or  fancied.  Too  much  current  scholarship  on  eighteenth  century 
England  is  a  mad  scramble  in  search  of  romanticism.  I  would 
try  to  prove  how  much  the  Augustans,  with  their  purely  classi- 
cal ideals,  have  done  for  a  fuller  appreciation  of  Spenser  if  we 
would  only  listen  to  them. 

But  the  principles  of  Augustanism,  in  their  turn,  served 
their  purpose,  were  distrusted,  and  flung  aside.  Then  came  the 
Triumph  of  Romanticism.  I  do  not  need  to  rhapsodize  the  great 
days  of  the  new  faith.  In  spite  of  the  pasteboard  dragons,  real- 
ism, science,  commercialism,  romanticism  still  flourishes  and  is, 
in  some  aspects,  even  a  menace.  Poe,  in  his  sonnet  on  science, 
voiced  a 'thought  still  popular  when  he  accused  the  men  of  scal- 
pels and  acids  of  driving  the  faun  from  the  forest,  the  light  of 
romance  from  men's  eyes.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  romanticists, 
whatever  they  may  have  said  by  way  of  theory,  have  developed  a 
highly  organized  method  that  may  be  often  quite  accurately 
termed  Scientiflc  Romanticism.  Sometimes  the  romanticist 
makes  of  himself  a  delicately  adjusted  machine  with  works  of 
fairy  frailty  that  responds  to  the  least  shadow  of  a  sensation  and 
records  it  with  painful  accuracy.  Hair  is  no  longer  merely  golden 
to  the  eyes  of  the  romanticist.  ''A  citron  colour  gloomed  in  her 
hair."  And  man  no  longer  merely  rejoices.  He  is  said  to  suffer 
in  some  glorious  agony  of  delight.  Like  the  seismograph  which 
registers  to  the  watching  scientist  the  least  tremor  of  the  earth, 
this  sensation-loving  Scientific  Romanticist,  with  body  and  soul 
magnetized  to  the  point  of  disease,  shudders  exquisitely  and  lux- 
uriously at  the  most  dim  adumbration  of  a  feeling.  Sometimes 
the  romanticists  have  practically  taken  over  the  realistic  methods 
of  Zola.  But  instead  of  examining  all  human  nature  in  a 
scientist 's  laboratory,  as  Zola  advocates,  they  have  confined  them- 
selves to  an  elaborate  vivisection  of  the  ego.     Too  often  w^e  mis- 


88  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.    [Vol.  2 

use  Spenser,  who  projected  vaster,  saner  things,  as  a  mere  picture- 
gallery,  a  mere  bundle  of  unregulated  emotions,  an  exotic  drug  to 
feed  an  already  over-developed  part  of  our  organisms.  But  we 
are  not  as  decadent  as  our  Jeremiahs  and  even  some  of  our  poets 
themselves  would  have  us  believe.  When  our  poets  are  discerning 
enough  to  use  the  materials  instead  of  the  methods  of  science, 
when  they  abandon  themselves  to  the  magnificent  fairy-land  of 
the  crowded  skies,  of  a  lichen,  which  the  scientists  have  given  us 
in  place  of  the  already  outworn  fairy-land  that  they  took  away, 
then  truly  our  poets  walk  erect.  Like  reckless  nature,  we  indulge 
in  a  princely  waste  of  energy  and  hopes  and  fears.  Something 
will  come  of  our  superb  restlessness.  How  much  poorer  were  the 
Elizabethans  in  source  of  inspiration  with  only  Drake,  Frobisher, 
and  the  round  world  to  fire  their  sense  of  mystery ! 

By  a  study  of  all  the  critics  who  have  felt  these  mighty  cur- 
rents of  thought  which  I  have  sketched  with  such  impertinent 
brevity  we  ought  to  come,  for  the  first  time,  to  a  full  apprecia- 
tion of  Spenser. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  89 


II 

THE  AGE  OF  ENTHUSIASM  AND  SPENSER-WORSHIP 

I  have  said  that  Spenser's  day  was  aglow  with  ardent  faith 
in  everything  English  and  therefore  with  Spenser-worship.  At 
the  very  outset,  The  Shepheards  Calender  was  acclaimed  with  a 
full  chorus  of  idolatrous  panegyrics.  There  were  those  who  de- 
murred at  praising  The  Faerie  Queene.  Gabriel  Harvey  was, 
for  the  moment,  purblind  with  his  plethora  of  eccentric  classi- 
cism. Poets  like  Michael  Drayton  and  Phineas  Fletcher,  to  whom 
The  Shepheards  Calender  was  not  a  cold  pastoral  but  an  inti- 
mate song  of  youth's  joys  and  sorrows  and  aspirations,  of  the 
delightful  miseries  of  calf-love,  preferred  their  master's  maiden 
effort  until  maturity  taught  them  to  feel  the  sultry  splendour 
and  the  more  impersonal  note  of  The  Faerie  Queene.  A  belated 
and  perhaps  solitary  relic  of  this  opinion  appears  in  1679  in  Dr. 
Samuel  Woodford's  preface  to  his  Legend  of  Love,  a  translation 
of  the  Canticles.  Woodford  was  no  obscure  eccentric  outside  the 
literary  circles  of  his  day.  In  his  Epoda  to  the  Legend  of  Love, 
moreover,  he  used  the  stanza  of  The  Faerie  Queene  and  borrowed 
from  the  allegorical  lore  of  the  epic.  But  in  spite  of  the  good 
divine 's  religiosity  he  could  not  refrain  from  expressing  a  boyish 
preference  for  the  work  of  Spenser's  dawn,  and  his  devotion  to 
the  love  of  God  did  not  keep  him  from  sharing  with  Spenser  a 
keen  interest  in  Rosalind,  the  widow's  scornful  daughter  of  the 
Glen.  The  Shepheards  Calender  has  been  justly  classed  by  Mr. 
Schelling  with  the  Arcadia  and  the  Euphues  as  being  one  of  the 
greatest  contemporary  influences.  It  is  difficult  for  us,  among 
whom  formal  pastorals  have  fallen  into  disrepute,  to  understand 
how  the  light  of  this  first  great  poem  of  modern  England  dilated 
the  eyes  of  those  who  were  hungering  for  a  countryman  with  a 
poet 's  insight.  And  those  who  do  realize  the  immense  popularity 
of  the  poem  are  too  apt  to  attribute  it  merely  to  the  flow  of  easy 


90  University  of  California  Puhlications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

melody,  the  variety  and  perfection  of  form.  But  to  young  men, 
poets  and  lovers,  in  the  age  of  Elizabeth,  The  Shepheards  Calen- 
der, despite  its  so-called  artificiality,  was  a  scripture  to  meditate 
upon.  Those  who  were  less  enthusiastic  at  first  about  The  Faerie 
Queene  were,  in  the  main,  those  who  wished  to  hear  more  about 
Colin  and  his  fortunes  with  Rosalind.  Even  Harvey,  lost  in 
learned  meditations  over  the  introduction  of  classical  prosody 
into  English,  felt  the  same  mood. 

"CoUyn,  I  see,  by  thy  new  taken  taske, 
Some  sacred  fury  hath  enricht  thy  braynes, 
That  leades  thy  muse  in  haughty  verse  to  maske. 
And  loath  the  layes  that  longs  to  lowly  swaynes; 
That  lifts  thy  notes  from  Shepheardes  unto  kinges: 
So  like  the  lively  Larke  that  mounting  singes. 

*'Thy  lovely  Eosalinde  seems  now  forlorne, 
And  all  thy  gentle  flockes  forgotten  quight: 
Thy  chaunged  hart  now  holdes  thy  pypes  in  scorne, 
Those  prety  pypes  that  did  thy  mates  delight: 
Those  trusty  mates,  that  loved  thee  so  well; 
Whom  thou  gav'st  mirth,  as  they  gave  thee  the  bell,  "i 

But  those  whose  enthusiasm  for  Spenser's  personal  confessions 
made  them  at  first  reluctant  to  see  him  retire  to  the  heights  of  the 
epic  poet,  came  forward,  almost  without  exception,  a  little  later, 
with  the  highest  praise.  And  their  hesitant  protests  had  already 
been  lost  in  a  storm  of  laudation  with  which  others  had  welcomed 
the  poet 's  masterpiece.  Even  Harvey,  though  he  has  been  always 
recorded  as  a  most  uncompromising  enemy  of  The  Faerie  Quellne, 
appears,  on  investigation,  to  have  recanted. 

The  relations  of  Spenser  and  Harvey  have  not  been  carefully 
stated.  It  is  probable  that  we  have  been  overestimating  the  influ- 
ence of  the  self-made  dictator  on  the  young  poet.  It  is  true  that 
Spenser  revered  Harvey.  He  did  not,  however,  share  unre- 
servedly his  would-be  mentor's  enthusiasm  for  classical  metres 
in  English ;  his  own  experiments  seem  to  have  been  few  and  the 
product  of  almost  whimsical  moments.    He  made  restrictions  on 


1  Verse  by  Harvey,  To  the  learned  Shepheard,  prefixed  to  the  first  three 
books  of  The  Faerie  Queene  when  published  in  1590. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  91 

classical  metres  in  a  letter  to  Harvey  where  he  shows  one  of  his 
few  glimmerings  of  humour. 

"For  the  onely  or  chief  est  hardness;  whyche  seemeth,  is  in  the 
accente;  which  sometime  gapeth,  and,  as  it  were  yawneth  illflavouredly, 
comming  shorte  of  that  it  should,  and  sometimes  exceeding  the  measure 
of  the  Number,  as  in  Carpenter  the  middle  sillable,  being  used  shorte  in 
speache,  when  it  shall  be  read  long  in  Verse,  seemeth  like  a  lame  Gosling 
that  draweth  one  legge  after  her;  and  Heaven  being  used  shorte  as  one 
sillable,  when  it  is  in  Verse  stretched  out  with  a  Diastole,  is  like  a  lame 
Dogge  that  holds  up  one  legge.  But  it  is  to  be  wonne  with  Custome  and 
rough  words  must  be  subdued  with  use." 

And  it  is  to  be  observed  that  all  Spenser 's  real  efforts  were  being 
spent  on  poems  that  bristled  with  rhymes.  By  1580,  at  a  time 
when  Harvey's  star  was  still  in  the  ascendant,  Spenser  had  at 
least  begun  work  on  his  Faerie  Queene.  Harvey,  to  be  sure,  had 
mostly  golden  words  for  his  friend.  He  liked  the  Dreams  ' '  pass- 
ingly well ' '  because  ' '  they  savour  of  that  singular  extraordinarie 
veine  and  invention  which  I  ever  fancied  moste,  and  in  a  manner 
admired  onely  in  Lucian,  Petrarche,  Aretine,  Pasquila."  He 
gave  his  younger  brother  "a  certaine  famous  Book  called  the 
newe  Shepheardes  Calender"  telling  him  to  make  Willye's  and 
Thomalin's  emblems  in  March  into  English  verse.  Above  all,  in 
his  address  to  the  reader  in  The  First  Booke  of  the  Preservation 
of  King  Henry  VII,  though  he  is  praising  classical  metres  and 
poets,  he  adds: 

"Nevertheless  I  confesse  and  acknowledge  we  have  many  singular 
good  poets  in  this  our  age  ....  whom  I  reverence  in  that  kind  of  prose 
rhythme  [viz.  rhyming] ;  wherein  Spenser  (without  offense  spoken)  hath 
surpassed  them  all." 

It  is  not  even  safe  to  follow  the  beaten  path  of  the  historians 
of  English  literature  and  set  down  Harvey  as  the  enemy  of  The 
Faerie  Queene.  It  is  true  that  his  first  attitude  was  cold.  The 
strictures  in  his  famous  letter  to  Spenser  are  a  commonplace  of 
quotation. 

"To  be  plaine,  I  am  voyde  of  all  judgement  if  your  nine  Comoedies 
....  come  not  neerer  Ariostoes  Comoedies  eyther  for  the  fineness  of 
plausible  elocution  or  the  rareness  of  Poetical  Invention,  than  that  elvish 
queene  doth  to  his  'Orlando  rurioso'."2 


2  Harvey 's  letter  of  April  7,  1580.     Spenser  certainly  could  not  have 
gone  far  with  The  Faerie  Queene  thus  early. 


92  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

His  commendatory  verses,  with  their  grudging  praise  of  the  new 
poem  and  their  regret  for  the  abandoned  vein  of  pastoral  poetry, 
have  already  been  transcribed.  On  the  other  hand  we  find  a 
manuscript  note  in  his  own  writing  in  his  copy  of  Gascoigne's 
Certain  Notes  of  Instruction  which  shows  a  clear  appreciation  of 
the  stanza  of  The  Faerie  Queene.  To  Gascoigne^s  advice,  *'To 
hold  the  just  measure  wherewith  you  begin  your  verse,"  Harvey 
added :  *  *  The  difference  of  the  last  verse  from  the  rest  in  everie 
stanza,  a  grace  in  the  'Faerie  Queene'."^  In  the  New  Letter  of 
notable  Contents  (1593)  there  is  a  more  general  statement  that 
certainly  is  not  reconcilable  with  Harvey's  earlier  animadver- 
sions: ''Or  is  not  the  verse  of  M.  Spencer  in  his  brave  Faery 
Queene  the  Virginall  of  the  divinest  Muses  and  gentlest  Graces  ? ' ' 

Among  Spenser's  other  friends  Sidney's  generous  praise  is  a 
matter  of  both  fact  and  tradition.  In  his  Apology  for  Poesie  he 
saw  in  the  anonymous  author  of  The  Shepheards  Calender  a  great 
poet  in  an  age  of  little  achievement,  although  he  disapproved  of 
"that  same  framing  of  his  stile  to  an  old  rustick  language." 
Tradition,  too,  has  it  that  the  terrible  picture  of  Despair,  in  the 
ninth  canto  of  the  first  book  of  The  Faerie  Queene,  opened  the 
floodgates  of  Sidney's  generous  praise  and  loosened  the  tassels 
of  his  purse. 

Nor  were  the  earlier  Elizabethan  critics  who  were  less  closely 
connected  with  the  poet  less  enthusiastic.  William  Webbe,  in  his 
Discourse  of  English  Poetrie  (1586),  is  full  of  enthusiasm  for 
the  new  poet.  He  longed  for  the  appearance  of  the  Dreames, 
Legends,  Court  of  Cupid,  and  the  prose  English  Poet.  He  depre- 
ciated English  poetry  in  general  but  judged  Spenser  not  inferior 
to  Theocritus  and  Virgil.  In  his  remarks  on  eclogues,  after  prais- 
ing Theocritus  and  Virgil  and  after  approving  of  Chaucer  with 
qualifications,  he  remarks : 

"But  nowe  yet  at  the  last  hath  England  hatched  uppe  one  Poet  of 
this  sorte,  in  my  conscience  comparable  with  the  best  in  any  respect; 
even  Master  Spenser. '* 


3  Quoted  by  Professor  E.  P.  Morton  in  *  *  The  History  of  the  Spenserian 
Stanza  before  1700, ' '  Modern  Philology,  IV,  no.  4,  April,  1907. 


1911]  •  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  93 

Again : 

"What  one  thing  is  there  in  them  so  worthy  admiration  whereunto 
we  may  not  adjoyne  something  of  his  of  equall  desert. ' ' 

Thomas  Nashe,  in  his  preface  to  Greene's  Menaphon  (1589),  in 

which  he  heartily  championed  the  glory  of  English  poetry,  held 

forth  in  praise  of  Spenser  with  his  customary  exuberance. 

"And  should  the  challenge  of  deepe  conceit  be  intended  by  any 
forreiner  to  bring  our  English  wits  to  the  tutchstone  of  Arte,  I  would 
preferre  divine  Master  Spenser,  the  miracle  of  wit  to  bandie  line  for  line 
for  my  life  in  the  honor  of  England,  gainst  Spaine,  France,  Italic,  and 
all  the  worlde. ' ' 

When  he  dedicated  his  Christs  Tears  over  Jerusalem  to  Lady 
Elizabeth  Carey,  the  highest  compliment  he  could  pay  was  that 
**  Fames  eldest  favourite,  Maister  Spencer,  in  all  his  writings  hie 
prizeth  you."  Puttenham,  or  the  author  of  The  Art  of  English 
Poesie  (1859),  mentions  ''that  other  gentleman  who  wrote  the 
late  Shepheards  Callender"  among  the  English  poets  to  be  com- 
mended. Soon  all  England  shared  Nashe 's  sublime  faith  in  the 
native  poets.  Francis  Meres  wrote  his  Palladis  Tamia  (1598)  to 
prove  them  the  peers  of  the  singers  of  all  the  world.  Concerning 
Spenser  he  uttered  a  stately  pageant  of  elaborate  compliments: 

"As  Sextus  Propertius  said  'nescio  quid  magis  nascitur  Iliade':  so  I 
say  of  Spenser's  I'airy  Queene,  I  know  not  what  more  excellent  or 
exquisite  poem  may  be  written." 

In  his  remarks  on  the  epic  poets  he  declared : 

"As  Homer  and  Vergil  among  the  Greeks  and  Latins  are  the  chief e 
Heroic  Poets:  So  Spenser  and  Warner  be  our  chief e  heroicall  makers." 

Spenser,  it  seems,  was  perfect  in  everything : 

"As  Pindarus,  Anacreon,  and  Callimachus  among  the  Greeks,  and 
Horace  and  Catullus  among  the  Latines  are  the  best  Lyrick  poets;  so  in 
this  faculty  the  best  among  our  poets  are  Spenser  (who  excelleth  in  all 
kinds),  Daniel,  Drayton,  Shakespere  and  Breton.  ...  As  Theocritus  in 
Greek,  Virgil  and  Mantuan  in  Latine,  Sana2ijir  in  Italian  and  the 
Authour  of  Amintae  Gaudia  and  Walsingham's  Melibaeus  are  the  best 
for  Pastorall,  so  amongst  us  the  best  in  this  kind  are  Sir  Philip  Sidney, 
Master  Challener,  Spenser,  Stephen  Gosson,  Abraham  Fraunce  and  Barne- 
field." 

This  is  typical  work  of  the  Age  of  Enthusiasm.  Unbounded 
faith  in   Spenser,   appreciation  of  Shakespeare,   Drayton,   and 


94  University  of  California  Fuhlications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

Daniel  is  accompanied  by  a  grotesque  lack  of  discrimination  in 
citing  such  names  as  those  of  Fraunce  and  Gosson  without  a 
smile.  We  can  see  from  the  literary  swashbuckling  of  men  like 
Nashe  and  Meres  what  England  had  to  learn  before  literary 
criticism  became  an  art  and  what  a  rare  world  of  fine  frenzy 
England  had  to  lose  to  buy  her  discrimination. 

We  can  touch  upon  but  a  few  of  the  more  interesting  poems  in 
the  torrent  which  sang  the  praises  of  Spenser.  Samuel  Daniel 
requires  special  attention.  In  one  of  the  best  known  sonnets  to 
Delia,  Daniel  had  cried  somewhat  scornfully : 

**Let   others   sing   of   knights   and   paladins 
In  aged  accents  and  untimely  words.'* 

This  has  often  been  plausibly  assumed  to  be  a  refererce  to  The 
Faerie  Queene.    In  consequence  some  have  thought  that  Daniel 
did  not  reciprocate  Spenser's  kindly  admiration.^    But  it  is  easy 
to  show  that  Daniel  had  the  same  rapturous  faith  that  stirred 
Nashe  and  Meres  to  intemperate  eloquence.    In  his  Dedication  of 
Cleopatra  he  lamented  that  England  is  bounded  by  the  ocean  and 
longed  that  her  songs  might  be  known  to  other  nations. 
*' Whereby  Great  Sidney  and  our  Spenser  might 
With  those  Po  Singers  being  equalled, 
Enchant  the  World  with  such  a  sweet  Delight 
That  their  eternal  Songs  forever  read. 
May  shew  what  great  Elisa  's  Eeign  hath  bred. ' ' 

Michael  Drayton's  weighty  Epistle  to  Henry  Reynolds  of  Poets 
and  Poesie  should  be  always  remembered  as  a  piece  of  remark- 
ably acute  criticism  at  a  time  when  national  self-confidence  and 
the  spirit  of  eulogy  ran  so  high  that  literary  criticism  was  prac- 
tically impossible.  Drayton's  estimate  of  his  immediate  prede- 
cessors was  genial,  sympathetic,  and  extraordinarily  shrewd.  For 
Spenser,  however,  nothing  but  hallelujahs  could  be  expected  from 
his  pen.    His  noble  lines  are  famous. 

"Grave  moral  Spenser  after  these  came  on, 

Than  whom  I  am  persuaded  there  was  none. 

Since  the  blind  bard  his  Iliads  up  did  make, 

Fitter  a  task  like  that  to  undertake; 

To  set  down  boldly,  bravely  to  invent, 

In  all  high  knowledge  surely  excellent. ' ' 

4  See  Colin  Clouts  Come  Home  Again,  11.  405-416,  for  Spenser's  kindly 
praise  of  the  younger  poet. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser,  95 

Joseph  Hall,  bishop  and  rough-and-ready  satirist,  has  per- 
plexed more  than  one  critic  with  what  they  consider  his  incon- 
sistent attitude  toward  Spen^£r.^  He  has  been  named  as  an 
admirer  of  Spenser,  as  an  enemy  of  Spenser,  as  hopelessly,  even 
treacherously,  inconsistent.  But  with  those  who  have  found  him 
at  any  time  hostile  lies  the  burden  of  proof.  All  the  definite  refer- 
ences to  Spenser  laud  him.  The  harsh  lines  tell  no  tales  and  have 
been  quoted  too  often  without  any  explanation  of  their  general 
context.  A  careful  examination  of  Hall's  poems  in  toto  makes 
his  attitude  perfectly  clear.  He  called  himself  the  first  English 
satirist.  He  believed  that  the  age  of  creative  poetry  was  at  least 
temporarily  over.  His  was  the  academic  or  bookish  attitude 
common  in  many  ages.  The  great  writers  have  said  it  all.  What 
is  the  use  of  writing  feeble  echoes?  And  to  Hall  one  of  the 
supreme  writers  who  had  left  nothing  more  to  be  done  was 
Edmund  Spenser.  In  1597  the  disgruntled  bishop  brought  out 
his  Virgidemiarum  containing  six  books  of  satires.  As  a  kind  of 
preface  he  wrote  a  Defiance  of  Envy,  the  seventh  stanza  of  which 
has  offended  the  admirers  of  Spenser.  He  asserted  that  he  did 
not  care  to 

".  .  .  .  Secure  the  rusted  swords  of  Elvish  Knights, 
Bathed  in  Pagan  blood;  or  sheath  them  new 
In  misty  morall  Types,  or  tell  their  fights, 
Who  mightie  Giants,  or  who  Monsters  slew. 
And  by  some  strange  inchanted  speare  and  shield, 
Vanquisht  their  foe,  and  won  the  doubtful  field.'' 

This  certainly  seems,  by  itself,  like  girding  at  The  Faerie  Queene. 
But  let  us  look  at  the  poem  as  a  whole.  It  begins  humbly  enough 
with  the  statement  that  the  pines  of  Ida  may  fear  the  sudden 
fires  of  heaven.  With  his  lowly  shrubs,  in  their  humble  dales,  he 
may  feel  secure.  If  his  muse  did  attempt  to  "scoure  the  rusted 
swords  of  Elvish  Knights, ' '  then  Envy  might  attack  him. 
*'But  now  such  lowly  Satyres  here  I  sing. 
Not   worth    our  Muse,   not   worth   their   envying." 

5  Thus  Dr.  Grosart,  Hall's  Poems  ed.  Manchester,  1879,  p.  xviii:  "I 
cannot  help  regretting  his  double-dealing  treatment  of  Spenser  as  the  most 
unpleasant  alloy  of  the  satires."  Thomas  Warton,  too,  (quoted  by  Grosart, 
ibid.),  was  very  much  disturbed  over  the  same  problem.  Other  critics  have 
conveyed  even  more  unfortunate  impressions  by  tearing  fragmentary  selec- 
tions inconsiderately  from  HalPs  references  or  possible  references  to 
Spenser. 


96  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

The  swords  are  rusted,  then,  because  there  is  no  Spenser  to  draw 
them.  That  is  the  point.  The  poem  is  full  of  Spenserian  phrases 
and  ends  with  an  unmistakable  tribute.  He  dares  try  no  high 
pastoral  strain  but 

**At  Collin's  feete  I  throw  my  yeelding  reede. '' 

It  is  not  possible  to  use  these  lines  as  evidence  that  Hall  loved 
The  Shepheards  Calender  but  thought  meanly  of  The  Faerie 
Queene.    For  elsewhere  he  writes : 

'*Tli'  eternall  Legends  of  thy  Faerie  Muse, 
Eenowned  Spenser:  whom  no  earthly  wight 
Dares  once  to   emulate,  much  less   dares  despight 
Salust  of  France  and  Tuscan  Ariost 
Yeeld  up  the  Lawrell  garland  ye  have  lost: 
And  let  all  others  willow  wear  with  me 
Or  let  their  undeserving  Temples  bared  be. "« 

It  is  important  to  know,  moreover,  that  our  quotation  closes  with 
a  vigorous  attack  on  Romantic  poems,  particularly  the  Orlando 
Furioso,  but  makes  careful  exception  in  the  case  of  Spenser.  And 
we  should  note  Hall's  conviction  of  the  futility  of  writing  new 
poems  in  emulation  of  the  master.  It  is  the  satiety  of  the  bookish 
mind. 

''Whilome    the    sisters    nine    were    Vestal    maides. 

Now  is  Parnassus  turned  to  a  stewes 

And  on   Bay-stocks   the  wanton  Myrtle   grewes.  "7 

The  great  poets  have  written.  Times  are  degenerate.  What 
seem  like  attacks  on  Spenser  generally  close  with  self-abasement. 
So  it  was  with  the  Defiance  of  Envy.  So  we  find  it  in  another, 
passage  that  has  worried  the  critics. 

''Nor   Ladies    wanton   love,    nor    wandering    knight, 
Legend  I  out  in  rimes  all  richly  dight," 


but 


*  *  Eather  had  I,  albee  in  careless  rymes. 
Check  the  mis-ordered  world  and  lawlesse  times.  "8 


This  is  the  characteristic  attitude  of  the  Jeremiah  who  thinks 
that  all  the  beautiful  things  have  been  said  and  that  the  present 


«  Book  I,  Sat.  IV,  11.  21  sq. 

7  Book  I,  Sat.  II,  11.  1-18. 

8  Book  I,  Sat.  I,  11.  30  sq. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  97 

is  diseased,  A  few  lines  below  he  is  more  specific  in  self-efface- 
ment. 

'^Or  if  we  list  [viz.  to  make  lofty  songs]  what  baser  muse  can  bide, 
To  sit  and  sing  by  Grantaes  naked  side? 
They  haunt  the  tyded  Thames  and  salt  Medway 
Ere  since  the  fame  of  their  late  Bridall  day.  "9 

This  is  evidently  a  reference  to  Spenser's  beautiful  description 
of  the  marriage  of  the  Thames  and  the  Medway^*^  and  an  expres- 
sion of  diffidence.  We  may  complete  our  citations  by  quoting 
from  Hairs  lines  to  William  Bedell  on  his  poem,  A  Protestant 
Memorial,^^  which  are  at  once  imitative  of  Spenser  and  a  tribute. 

"Willy,  thy  Khythms  so  sweetly  run  and  rise 
And  answers  rightly  to  thy  tuneful  Eead 

That  Collin  dying,  his  Immortal  Muse, 
Into  thy  Learned  Breast  did  late  infuse. ' ' 

It  is  ridiculous  to  attempt,  in  the  face  of  all  this,  to  attack  Hall  ^s 
attitude  toward  Spenser. 

We  cannot  pause  over  the  myriad  voices  of  the  other  poets 
who  threw  their  garlands  at  the  feet  of  the  great  singer.  Every- 
one should  know  Barnfield's  exquisite  sonnet,  "If  Music  and 
sweete  Poetrie  agree."  Peele,  Breton,  Browne,  Davies,  William 
Basse,  Francis  Beaumont,  a  legion,  glowed  with  the  most  gener- 
ous praise.  The  sweet  persuasiveness  of  some  well-known  lines 
from  The  Return  from  Parnassus  may  fitly  represent  the  full- 
chorused  laud. 

"A  sweeter  swan  than  ever  sang  in  Po, 
A  shriller  nightingale  than  ever  blessed 
The  prouder  groves  of  self -admiring  Kome! 
Blithe  was  each  valley,  and  each  shepherd  proud. 
While  he  did  chant  his  rural  minstrelsy; 
Attentive  was  full  many  a  dainty  ear; 
Nay,  hearers  hung  upon  his  melting  tongue. 
While  sweetly  of  his  Faerie  Queene  he  sung, 
While  to  the  waters'  fall  he  tun'd  his  fame." 


9  Book  I,  Sat.  I,  11.  30  sq. 

10  Faerie  Queene,  Book  IV,  Canto  11. 

11  Bedell 's  poem  is  an  imitation  of  The  Shepheards  Calender. 


University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 


III 

THE  AGE  OF  EEASON  AND  THE  RISE  OF  LITERARY 

CRITICISM 

While  the  Elizabethans  were  in  the  first  rapture  of  self-dis- 

/  covery,  extravagant  mutual  eulogy  was  to  be  expected.    But  when 

they  dropped  back  to  the  C-major  of  this  life  and  rodomontade 

ceased  to  be  the  fashion,  a  genuine  literary  criticism  was  born. 

Even  in  the  Age  of  Enthusiasm,  Drayton  and  Hall  have  been 
seen  to  show  some  critical  discrimination.  But  Ben  Jonson's 
burly  figure  looms  largest  among  the  first  English  writers  of 
critical  works.  Unfortunately  he  gave  us  no  well-rounded  esti- 
^mate  of  Spenser  although  he  was  liberal  with  tantalizing  allus- 
ions. With  Spenser's  stanza  and  diction  he  was  clearly  out  of 
V  tune.  He  told  Drummond  {Conversations,  1619),  that  '^Spenser's 
stanzaes  pleased  him  not,  nor  his  matter;  the  meaning  of  which 
Allegoric  he  had  delivered  in  papers  to  Sir  Walter  Rauglie." 
But  Jonson  was  grumbling  almost  unintermittently  at  this 
famous  symposium.  And  perhaps  Drummond  tinged  his  record 
more  deeply  with  his  own  apparent  impression  of  Ben 's  perennial 
surliness.  Jonson,  at  all  events,  had  some  good  words  for  Spen- 
ser's matter  in  his  Discoveries  (1625-35  ?) . 

"Spenser,  in  affecting  the  Ancients  writ  no  Language.  Yet  I  would 
have  him  read  for  his  matter,  but  as  Virgil  read  Ennius. ' ' 

The  attack  on  Spenser's  archaisms  was  promptly  caught  up  by 
subsequent  critics.^  In  another  part  of  the  Discoveries  Jonson 
says,  somewhat  inconsistently : 

** Words  borrowed  of  Antiquity  doe  lend  a  kind  of  Majesty  to  style, 
and  are  not  without  their  delight  sometimes." 


1  There  is  a  bare  possibility  that  Jonson  was  influenced  in  his  distaste 
for  Spenser's  diction  by  Sidney.  Professor  J.  E.  Spingarn  (Crit.  Essays 
of  the  17th  Century  Introd.  p.  xiii)  points  out  that  the  Prologue  to  Every 
Man  in  his  Humour  is  "a  noble  patchwork  of  passages  from  the  Apology 
for  Poesie.  Jonson  may  have  learned  his  distaste  for  Spenser's  old  words 
from  the  stricture  in  the  same  work. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  99 

But,  on  the  whole,  he  prefers  the  newest  words.  That  Ben  Jon- 
son  of  the  rocky  face  and  mountain  belly  was  not  always  imper- 
vious to  Spenserian  appeal  is  attested  in  Drummond  's  record  that 

*'He  hath  by  heart  some  verses  of  Spenser's  Calender  about  wyne,  be- 
tween Coline  and  Pereye. " 

Jonson  's  masque,  The  Golden  Age  Restored,  introduces  Chaucer, 
Gower,  Lydgate,  and  Spenser  as  ideal  figures  of  the  good  old  days. 
When  Pallas  has  driven  away  Iron  Age  and  her  rout  of  Vices, 
she  summons  Astraea  and  Golden  Age  with  a  flourish  of  her 
aegis.    And  for  their  retinue  she  calls : 

**You  far-famed  spirits  of  this  happy  isle, 
That,  for  your  sacred  songs  have  gained  the  style 
Of  Phoebus'  sons,  whose  notes  the  air  aspire 
Of  the  old  Egyptian,  or  the  Thracian  lyre 
That  Chaucer,  Gower,  Lydgate,  Spenser  hight. 
Put  on  your  better  flames  and  larger  light. 
To  wait  upon  the  Age  that  shall  your  names  new  nourish. 
Since  Virtue  pressed  shall  grow,  and  buried  Arts  shall  flourish. ' ' 

This  readiness  to  accept  Spenser  as  at  least  a  traditional  classic     *^' 
is  also  apparent  in  a  characteristic  fling  at  the  rascal  many  in  the 
Discoveries. 

''There  were  never  wanting  those  that  dare  prefer  the  worst  poets. 
.  .  .  Nay,  if  it  were  put  to  the  question  of  the  water-rimers  works 
against  Spenser's,  I  doubt  not  but  they  would  find  more  suffrages;  be- 
cause the  most  favor  common  vices  out  of  a  prerogative  the  vulgar  have 
to  lose  their  judgements  and  like  that  which  is  nought. ' ' 

It  is  not  unlikely  that  Jonson,  on  the  whole,  was  an  admirer  of 
Spenser.  And  his  animadversions  are  those  of  a  man  who  prob- 
ably loved  Spenser  as  he  loved  Shakespeare — ''on  this  side 
idolatry. '  * 

Edmund  Bolton,  although  his  contribution  to  Spenserian 
criticism  is  slight,  should  not  be  forgotten,  because  he  has  con- 
siderable significance  in  the  history  of  English  criticism.  He 
reacted  against  the  irresponsible  sentences  and  parti-coloured  dic- 
tion of  Elizabethan  novelists  and  pamphleteers.  In  feeling  the 
need  of  conscious  ideals  in  prose  style  he  was  of  the  new  age.  His 
Hypercritica,  Or  A  Rule  of  Judgment  For  Writing  Or  Beading 


100  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

Our  Histories  (completed  e.  1618  but  first  published  in  1722 )2 
treated  not  only  the  problem  of  sources  but  the  kind  of  prose 
that  was  suitable  for  good  historical  writing.  For  this  purpose 
Bolton  considered  the  manner  of  both  English  poetry  and  prose. 
He  seems  to  have  had  a  wide  knowledge  and  a  fair  appreciation 
of  English  literature.  For  prose  suitable  to  the  writing  of  his- 
tories he  preferred,  sensibly  enough,  the  poetry  of  Jonson  and 
the  prose  of  Bacon  as  supreme  models.  But  he  found  Spenser's 
Hymns  valuable  for  the  same  purpose. 

''In  verse  there  are  Ed.  Spencer's  Hymns.  I  cannot  advise  the 
allowance  of  other  of  his  Poems,  as  for  practick  English,  no  more  than 
I  can  do  Jeff  Chaucer,  Lydgate,  Pierce  Ploughman,  or  Laureate  Skelton. ' ' 

For  the  use  of  **old  outworn  words"  in  history  was,  in  Bolton's 
opinion,  to  be  condemned. 

In  the  tenth  chapter  of  his  Compleat  Gentleman  (1622) 
Henry  Peacham  pointed  out  the  value  of  the  study  of  poetry  and 
closed  his  review  of  great  poets  with  a  brief  but  flattering  pic- 
ture of  those  of  Elizabeth's  days. 

"In  the  time  of  our  late  Queen  Elizabeth  which  was  truly  a  golden 
age  ....  above  others  who  honoured  Poesie  with  their  pennes  and 
practise  ....  were  Edward  Earle  of  Oxford,  the  Lord  Buckhurst,  Henry 
Lord  Paget;  our  Phoenix,  the  noble  Sir  Philip  Sidney;  M.  Edward  Dyer, 
M.  Edmund  Spencer,  M.  Samuel  Daniel,  with  sundry  others  whom  .... 
not  out  of  Envie  but  to  avoide  tediousnesse  I  overpasse.  This  much  of 
Poetrie.'' 

William  L'isle  in  prefatory  words  to  the  reader  before  his 
translation  of  Du  Bartas  (1625)  made  a  thoroughly  neo-classical 
comment  on  Spenser's  alexandrines  that  should  be  quoted  as 
among  the  comparatively  few  definite  criticisms  of  Spenser's 
stanza  in  the  seventeenth  century. 

"The  Bartasian  verse  (not  unlike  herein  to  the  Latin  Pentameter) 
hath  ever  this  propertie,  to  part  in  the  mids  betwixt  two  wordes:  so  much 
doe  French  prints  signifie  with  a  stroke  interposed.  .  .  .  The  neglect  of 
this  hath  caused  many  a  brave  stanza  of  the  Faerie  Queene  to  end  but 
harshly,  which  might  have  been  prevented  at  the  first;  but  now  the  fault 
may  be  sooner  found  than  amended." 


2  By  Anthony  Hall,  at  the  end  of  his  Nicolai  Triveti  Annalium  Contin- 
uatio,  Oxford,  1722. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  101 

In  the  next  century  a  critic  as  acute  as  Thomas  Warton  expressed 
the  same  insistence  on  the  middle  caesura  and  the  same  blindness 
to  the  charm  of  the  flowing,  pauseless  alexandrine  that  Spenser 
used,  at  times,  with  such  felicity. 

The  self-abasement  or  doubt  that  comes  with  an  Age  of  Rea- 
son appears  in  Henry  Reynolds,  the  mystic,  to  whom  Drayton 
addressed  his  Epistle,  Of  Poets  and  Poesie.  Reynolds  lamented 
the  bad  state  of  English  poetry,  a  mood  which  would  not  have 
occurred  to  a  full-fledged  Elizabethan,  in  his  Mythomestes 
wherein  a  short  survay  is  taken  of  the  nature  and  value  of  true 
Poesie,  and  the  depth  of  the  Ancients  above  our  Moderne  Poets 
(1633).  It  is  significant  of  the  growing  sense  for  criticism  care- 
fully weighed,  and  significant  of  Spenser's  impregnable  fame, 
that  Reynolds  included  him  in  a  brief  list  of  well-selected  poets 
whom  he  regarded  as  exempt  from  the  sweeping  condemnation 
that  he  had  bestowed  on  most  moderns.  With  the  judgment  of 
the  acute  connoisseurs  who  always  know  what  will  last  in  litera- 
ture, Reynolds  selected  Chaucer  (especially  in  his  Troilus),  Sid- 
ney, Spenser,  Daniel,  and  Drayton  as  the  true  elect. 

''Next,  I  must  approve  the  learned  Spencer,  in  the  rest  of  his  Poems 
no  lesse  than  his  Fairy  Queene,  an  exact  body  of  the  Ethicke  doctrine; 
though  some  good  judgments  have  wisht,  and  perhaps  not  without  cause, 
that  he  had  therein  been  a  little  freer  of  his  fiction,  and  not  so  close 
rivetted  to  his  Morall. " 

This  guarded  criticism  of  Spenser 's  didactic  method  is  an  expres- 
sion of  an  attitude  toward  the  Faerie  Queene  which  we  have 
inherited  as  a  birthright  and  an  affliction  principally  from  the 
later  romanticists  who  are  responsible  for  many  of  our  limita- 
tions in  appreciating  Spenser.  But  they  are  less  careful  in  their 
statements  than  this  gentle,  far-seeing  mystic  of  the  seventeenth 
century. 

The  general  tendency,  however,  throughout  the  seventeenth 
century  and  the  first  part  of  the  eighteenth  was  to  take  Spenser's 
moralistic  aspect  very  seriously  and,  on  the  whole,  more  justly 
and  sympathetically  than  many  of  us  do  to-day.  Sir  Kenelm 
Digby's  Observations  on  the  Twenty -Second  Stanza  of  the  Ninth 
Canto  of  the  Second  Book  of  Spencer's  Faery  Queen  (1644)  is 


102  University  of  California  PuMications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

typical  of  the  attitude  of  so  many  who  accepted  Spenser  as  poet 
and  teacher.  Sir  Kenelm  Digby  took  one  of  the  most  abstruse 
stanzas  in  The  Faerie  Queene  and  gave  it  an  elaborate  philosophi- 
cal interpretation. 

We  approach  a  figure  who  was  so  significant  in  his  own  day 
and  such  a  bare  name  at  the  present  time  that  he  must  be  elab- 
orately considered.  I  have  said  that  the  Age  of  Reason  inevit- 
ably begot  a  doubt  which  scattered  into  anarchy.  Henry  More, 
the  Cambridge  Platonist,  is  a  figure  to  be  expected  at  such  a  crisis. 
Serene-eyed  with  the  still-deep  wisdom  of  Plato,  he  turned 
proudly  and  calmly  from  the  growing  materialism  of  the  day  and 
wrought  strange,  dim  tapestries  of  mystical  dreams.  His  cult 
was  a  power  in  its  time  against  the  rationalism  of  Descartes  so 
ready  to  link  hands  with  the  ideals  of  the  new  classicists,  "vrai- 
semblance,"  ''nature,"  " commonsense. "  He  was  one  of  the 
many  forces  that  kept  this  neo-classicism  starving  in  England 
for  a  half -century.  In  1642  More  published  his  Psychodia 
Platonica  and  in  1647  he  brought  out  an  enlarged  edition  of  this 
Platonick  Song  of  the  Soul  under  the  general  heading  Philosophi- 
call  Poems.  This  gigantic  affair  in  Spenserian  stanzas  was  cer- 
tainly not  calculated  to  captivate  the  masses  who  run.  But  it  was 
the  profound  if  eccentric  utterance  of  a  man  who  stood  on  the 
battle-line  of  a  great  controversy  of  the  day.  More's  dedication 
to  his  father  indicates  how  much  of  his  idealism  must  have  grown 
out  of  a  life-long  intimacy  with  Spenser 's  poems. 

"You  deserve  the  Patronage  of  better  Poems  than  these  though  you 
may  lay  a  more  proper  claim  to  these  than  to  any.  You  having  from  my 
childhood  tuned  mine  ears  to  Spenser's  rhymes,  entertaining  us  on  winter 
nights,  with  that  incomparable  Piece  of  his,  The  Fairy  Queen  a  Poem 
as  richly  fraught  with  divine  Morality  as  Phansy. '^ 

To  More,  then,  the  poet  was  a  noble  priest,  a  conception  too 
unpopular  in  our  own  day  since  the  romanticists  have  taught  us 
to  toy  with  his  seductive  music  alone.  More,  indeed,  was  at  the 
other  pole.  He  was  one  of  those  quixotic  idealists  who  reared, 
with  pathetic  enthusiasm,  towers  of  Babel  in  a  noble  but  almost 
fruitless  cause.  He  wrote  in  the  days  when  men  dared  to  justify 
the  ways  of  God  to  man,  though  he  wrote  when  the  doubting 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  103 

Thomases  were  becoming  legion.  In  the  eighteenth  century  men 
took  to  celebrating  in  song  the  cotton  industry  or  The  Art  of 
Preserving  Health.  Today  some  of  us  have  fallen  lower  and 
write  for  ''Art's  sake." 

In  the  growing  Age  of  Literary  Anarchy  we  have  already 
noted  another  figure  proudly  independent  of  the  frailties  of  one 
age---John  Milton.  He,  too,  gave  sturdy  praise  to  the  moralistic 
aspect  of  Spenser's  genius.  In  the  Areopagitica  (1644)  he  wrote 
of  ''Our  sage  and  serious  Spenser,  whom  I  dare  be  kno^vn  to 
think  a  better  teacher  than  Scotus  or  Aquinas. ' '  Edward  Dowden 
has  made  this  the  text  of  the  richest  essay  on  Spenser  that  our 
age  can  claim. 

We  come  now  to  one  of  the  earliest  apostles  of  that  neo-classi- 
cism  which  in  England  struggled  only  with  great  difficulty 
through  the  Age  of  Literary  Anarchy  and  gained  supremacy  at 
last  when  Pope  and  Addison  planted  the  standard  on  the  heights. 

The  first  important  critical  document  of  the  neo-classicists 
was  Sir  William  Davenant's  preface  to  Gondihert.  This  has  been 
inconsiderately  damned  as  crass  and  unsympathetic  in  its  atti- 
tude toward  Spenser.    In  Davenant  's  own  day  Aubrey  wrote : 

*'Sir  John  Denham  told  me  that  A.  BP.  Usher,  Lord  Primate  of 
Armagh  was  acquainted  with  him  [Spenser],  by  this  token,  when  Sir  W. 
Davenant 's  'Gondibert'  came  forth,  Sir  John  askt  the  Lord  Primate  if 
he  had  seen  it?  Said  the  Primate,  'Out  upon  him,  with  his  vaunting 
preface,  he  speaks  against  my  old  friend,  Edmund  Spenser '. ' ' 

Something  like  the  Lord  Primate's  idea  seems  to  have  prevailed 

ever  since.    But  to  call  Davenant  hostile  to  Spenser  is  to  read  his 

preface  without  any  sense  of  perspective.    Davenant  shared  the 

generally  increasing  objections  to  the  archaisms. 

''But  as  it  is  false  husbandry  to  graft  old  branches  upon  young 
stocks:  so  we  may  wonder  that  our  language  .  .  .  should  receive  from  his 
[Spenser's]  hand,  new  grafts  of  old  wither 'd  words." 

Again : 

* '  The  unlucky  choice  of  his  stanza  hath  by  repetition  of  Rime  brought 
him  to  the  necessity  of  many  exploded  words. ' ' 

Although  the  preface  is  emphatic  in  its  identification  of  the  ideal 
poet  and  the  moralist,  yet  Davenant  was  not  in  sympathy  with 


104  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

Spenser's  method  of  inculcating  virtue, — ''His  allegorical  Story 
.  .  .  .  resembling  (methinks)  a  continuation  of  extraordinary 
Dreams;  such  as  excellent  Poets,  and  Painters,  by  being  over- 
studious  may  have  in  the  beginning  of  Feavers."  These  are  the 
shrewd  complaints  of  Sir  William  Davenant,  a  sane  literary 
critic  who  believed  criticism  to  be  the  noble  art  of  praise  with 
intelligent  qualifications.  We  must  consider  the  general  scheme 
of  his  essay  to  understand  his  full  estimate  of  Spenser.  He  was 
about  to  propound  the  rules  for  an  ideal  epic  and  he  began  by 
naming  those  whom  he  considered  the  supreme  writers  of  heroic 
poetry.  He  thus  placed  Spenser  with  Homer,  Virgil,  Lucan, 
Statins,  and  Tasso.  He  then  pointed  out  the  failings  of  each 
writer  and  Spenser  hardly  fared  worse  than  any  of  the  others. 
In  this  way  Davenant  gave  Spenser  implicitly  the  highest  praise. 

"Spencer  may  stand  here  as  the  last  of  this  short  File  of  Heroick 
Poets — Men  whose  intellectuals  were  of  so  great  a  making  (though  some 
have  thought  them  lyable  to  those  few  Censures  we  have  mentioned)  as 
perhaps  they  will  in  worthy  memory  outlast  even  the  Makers  of  Laws 
and  Founders  of  Empires,  and  all  but  such  as  must  live  equally  with 
them  because  they  have  recorded  their  manner;  and  consequently  with 
their  own  hand  led  them  to  the  Temple  of  Fame.  And  since  we  have 
dar'd  to  remember  those  exceptions  which  the  Curious  have  against 
them,  it  will  not  be  expected  I  should  forget  what  is  objected  against 
Spenser  whose  obsolete  Language  we  are  constrain 'd  to  mention,  though 
it  be  grown  the  most  vulgar  accusation  that  is  laid  to  his  charge. ' ' 

Davenant 's  tone  was  distinctly  apologetic.  He  more  than  once 
foisted  his  adverse  criticisms  on  ' '  the  Curious. ' '  He  feared  that 
his  censures  of  ''this  short  File  of  Heroick  Poets"  would  make 
Hobbes,  to  whom  he  addressed  his  preface,  think  him  "malicious" 
in  observing  the  faults  which  "the  Curious"  had  found  with  the 
revered  writers.  His  detailed  criticisms,  restored  to  their  con- 
text, become!  then  of  minor  importance.  There  have  been  ardent 
admirers  of  Spenser,  in  every  period,  who  could  subscribe  with 
little  emendation  to  Davenant 's  complaints. 

Abraham  Cowley's  delightful  tribute  needs  no  comment. 

"I  believe  I  can  tell  the  particular  little  chance  that  filled  my  head 
first  with  such  chimes  of  verse,  as  have  never  since  left  ringing  there: 
for  I  remember,  when  I  first  began  to  read,  and  to  take  some  pleasure 
in  it,  there  was  wont  to  lie  in  my  mother's  parlour   (I  know  not  by  what 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  105 

accident,  for  she  herself  never  in  her  life  read  any  book  but  of  devo- 
tion)— but  there  was  wont  to  lie  Spenser's  works;  thus  I  happened  to 
fall  upon,  and  was  infinitely  delighted  with  the  stories  of  the  knights, 
and  giants,  and  monsters,  and  brave  houses,  which  I  found  everywhere  /^ 

there  (though  my  understanding  had  little  to  do  with  all  this);  so  that, 
I  think  I  had  read  him  all  over  before  I  was  twelve  years  old,  and  thus 
was  made  a  poet  as  irremediably  as  a  child  is  made  a  eunuch. '  '3 

In  1669  Edward  Howard,  Dryden's  disputant  and  a  fairly 
staunch  neo-classicist,  brought  out  his  The  British  Princes.  Spen- 
ser was  remembered  as  ''the  first  of  England's  poets''  and  *'by 
many  granted  a  Parallel  to  most  of  the  Antients. ' ' 

The  Age  of  Reason,  meanwhile,  had  been  verging  rapidly 
into  the  Age  of  Literary  Anarchy.  But  it  seems  fitting  to  begin 
our  review  of  the  later  period  with  John  Dryden  who,  as  I  have 
said,  epitomizes  its  spirit. 


y 


3  Essays  in  Prose  and  Verse  1668.   No.  XI. 


106  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 


IV 

THE  AGE  OF  LITERARY  ANARCHY 

Many  times  already,  in  this  study,  we  have  had  occasion  to 
note  the  change  from  the  Elizabethan  Age  of  rapturous  faith  to 
an  age  of  doubt,  of  unrest,  finally  of  absolute  literary  anarchy 
which  corresponded  well  with  the  great  political  upheavals  which 
distressed  England  throughout  the  reign  of  the  Stuarts.  Eliza- 
bethan ideals  were  unified  by  their  abounding  faith.  In  spite 
of  our  disgust  for  the  fulsome  eulogies  of  Elizabeth,  we  must 
admit  that,  when  the  last  shred  of  the  courtier's  mask  is  torn 
away,  there  glows  a  genuine  admiration,  a  deep  faith  in  the 
sovereign.  We  have  seen  that  the  climax  of  the  Elizabethan  Age 
was  the  time  of  boyish  panegyric,  and  that  England's  faith  in 
her  literature  was  so  immense  that  .sanely  regulated  literary 
criticism  was  impossible  until  the  canker  doubt  had  done  deadly 
work.  Then  English  poetry,  which  had  moved  in  comparative 
harmony,  gradually  divided  and  subdivided  itself  into  a  hundred 
jarring  sects.  Hostile  schools  despised  each  other  and  doubted 
themselves.  Men  became  inconstant  or  inconsistent  members  of 
two  warring  cults.  The  neo-classical  credo,  which  was  to  unify 
literature  once  more,  gained  ground  slowly,  and  did  not,  as  some 
have  thought,  triumph  in  the  days  of  Waller,  Denham,  or  Dryden. 
It  struggled  for  bare  existence  till  Pope  and  Addison  became 
dictators. 

The  Age  of  Literary  Anarchy  had  no  well-defined  beginning. 
It  came  about  very  slowly.  Such  men  as  William  Drummond  of 
Hawthornden,  Ben  Jonson,  and  Edward  Fairfax  spread,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  the  spirit  of  sedition.  Drummond 
and  Fairfax  combined  the  Elizabethan  love  of  sensuousness  with 
a  truly  classical  interest  in  form.  Fairfax  lived  in  the  limelight 
and  his  tastes  descended  to  Waller,  who  was  glad  to  acknowl- 
edge him  as  a  model.    Drummond  was  unusually  fond  of  using 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  107 

and  polishing  the  couplet,  the  form  that  the  neo-classicists  were 
to  accept  as  supreme.  His  bookishness  sent  him  directly  back  to 
the  Latin  poets  again  and  again.  His  love  of  form  stimulated 
him  to  experiment  more  with  sonnet-schemes  than  any  man  in 
the  language.  In  the  abandon  of  the  Elizabethan  genius,  then, 
his  almost  over-cultivated  mind  must  have  found  some  rough 
dissonances.  Ben  Jonson  was  a  more  definite  classicist  and  his 
influence  was  immense.  Of  these  earlier  figures  Edward  Fair- 
fax interests  us  most  of  all  because,  as  the  ardent  student  of 
Spenser  and  the  acknowledged  master  of  Waller,  he  linked  Spen- 
serian traditions  with  neo-classicism,  the  two  currents  of  English 
literature  that  critics  have  long  mistakenly  regarded  as  anti- 
pathetic. In  1600  Fairfax  published  his  translation  of  Tasso's 
Jerusalem  Delivered  {Godfrey  of  Bulloigne  or  The  Becoverie  of 
Jerusalem  Done  into  English  Heroicall  Yerse),  a  poem  which, 
though  in  ottava  rima,  taught  Waller  how  to  fashion  the  smooth 
couplets  that  made  him  the  model  of  all  true  believers  in  neo- 
classicism.  Fairfax  was  an  enthusiastic  follower  of  Spenser,  and 
frequently  departed  from  his  original  to  draw  more  near  to  The 
Faerie  Queene.  Spenser,  for  instance,  had  already  translated 
and  in  many  cases  improved  passages  from  Tasso  in  his  sensuous 
account  of  the  Bower  of  Bliss.  As  Fairfax  turned  his  Italian 
into  English,  memories  of  Spenser  often  led  him  delightedly 
astray.  He  describes  the  two  wantons,  who  would  have  lured 
Carlo  and  Ubaldo  from  their  quest  for  Rinaldo,  with  an  evident 
relish  of  Spenser's  exquisite  translation  in  his  mind.^  One  siren 
loosed  her  long  tresses  so  that  they  fell  down  and  half  hid  her 
naked  body. 

"Withal  she  smiled  and  she  blushed  withal, 
Her  blush,  her  smilings,  smiles  her  blushing  graced. 
Over  her  face  her  amber  tresses  fall, 
Whereunder  Love  himself  in  ambush  placed." 

The  play  on  words  is  ultimately  Tasso 's.    But  Spenser  wrote : 

''Withall  she  laughed,  and  she  blusht  withall 
That  blushing  to  her  laughter  gave  more  grace. ' ' 


1  Tasso,  C.  15.  St.  62.    Spenser,  B.  II,  C.  12,  St. 


108  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

Fairfax  was  plainly  captivated  by  the  charming  cadence  of  the 
repeated  ''withal"  and  pillaged  Spenser's  first  line.  In  his 
description  of  the  amorous  Armida  (C.  16,  St.  18),  Fairfax  adds 
to  the  conceits  of  Tasso  with  a  phrase  from  Spenser. 

"Her  breasts  were  naked  for  the  day  was  hot. 
Her  locks  unbound  waved  in  the  wanton  wind; 
Some  deal  she  sweat  tired  with  the  game  you  wot. 
Her  sweat-drops  bright,  white,  round,  like  pearls  of  Inde; 
Her  humid  eyes  a  firey  smile  forthshot 
That  like  sunbeams  in  silver  fountains  shined. 
O'er  him  her  looks  she  hung  and  her  soft  breast 
The  pillow  was,  where  he  and  love  took  rest." 

From  Spenser's  interpolation,  "pure  Orient  perles,"  (2,  12,  78) 
Fairfax  borrowed  his  simile,  "like  pearls  of  Inde,"  (for  there  is 
no  trace  in  the  original)  to  overweight  a  picture  already  langor- 
ous  to  the  last  degree.  He  constantly  sought  words  as  well  as 
fancies  from  his  master,  making  free  use  of  Spenser's  archaisms. 
In  emulating  the  highly  wrought  technique  of  Spenser  and  Tasso 
the  lesser  man  doubtless  found  himself  forced  into  that  more 
conscious  attention  to  finish  which  caught  the  eye  of  Edmund 
Waller.  At  all  events,  Waller  and  Dryden  considered  Fairfax 
as  one  of  their  sacred  authorities  for  the  new  couplet. 

In  decadent  Elizabethans,  who  outlived  the  Elizabethan  spirit 
of  youth,  ruddy  enthusiasm  became  hectic  disease,  careless  fancy 
was  metamorphosed  into  ingenious  artifice,  the  sensuousness  of 
Petrarch  was  laid  aside  for  the  conceits  of  Marini.  Such  a  spirit 
laid  prematurely  a  blighting  finger  on  the  large  soul  of  Donne  and 
spread  even  more  insidiously  through  the  religious  ecstasy  of 
Crashaw.  By  1630  England's  poetry  was  visibly  disturbed  by 
the  struggles  of  these  discordant  forces. 

From  about  1650  to  the  end  of  the  century  the  influence  of 
Spenser  was  at  its  lowest  ebb  in  the  history  of  English  poetry. 
The  cause  of  this  lies  precisely  in  that  multiplicity  of  artistic 
theories  that  brought  about  the  literary  civil  wars.  When  the 
Elizabethans  thought  that  they  tallied  all  antecedents  they  can- 
nonized  Spenser  in  a  thoroughly  uncritical  way.  He  was  their 
morning  star,  their  high  priest  of  poetry.    He  was  with  Homer. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  109 

The  admiration  of  later  writers  .was  no  less  deep  and  sincere,  but 
doubt  had  sharpened  their  critical  insight.  The  influence  of 
Spenser  was  no  less  great  than  that  of  any  other  writer.  It  was 
only  that  influences  were  legion.  There  were  no  great  central 
convictions  like  those  which  inspired  the  Elizabethans,  Augustans, 
and  romanticists  at  their  highest  point  of  development.  The 
wonder  is  that  Spenser  was  hospitably  received  in  so  many  antag- 
onistic gfoups  of  writers.  In  this  way,  indeed,  a  slender* bond  of 
unity  remained.  But  it  was  a  mere  shadow  of  the  old  community 
of  feeling. 

The  spirit  of  classicism  had  as  yet  but  a  thin  voice  in  the 
literary  affairs  of  the  age.  The  heavy  cloth  of  gold  of  the  renais- 
sance made  a  mantle  which  the  poets  were  loth  to  relinquish. 
Giles  and  Phineas  Fletcher,  for  instance,  those  pastor-poets  of 
Cambridge  University  who  sang,  in  Spenser 's  allegorical  manner, 
of  the  sacrifice  of  Christ  and  the  soul  of  man,  founded  a  school 
of  poets  who  perpetuated  the  sensuous  Spenserian  manner  even 
into  the  eighteenth  century.  Quarles,  Thomas  Robinson,  Dr. 
Joseph  Beaumont,  and  others  published  ambitious  attempts  in 
imitation  of  Spenser  and  the  Fletchers,  and  emulated  their  spirit 
in  an  age  when  chaotic  sectarianism  was  vitally  connected  with 
the  issues  of  the  day.  As  late  as  1679  this  movement  was  very 
much  alive  in  Samuel  Woodford 's  Legend  of  Love  and  its  Epoda 
in  Spenserian  stanzas.  Even  in  the  eighteenth  century,  when 
neo-classicism  held  full  sway,  "William  Thompson  registered  his 
name  as  the  last  in  this  school  with  his  Hymn  to  May  (1757),  a 
piece  which  closely  followed  Spenser 's  Epithalamion  and  Phineas 
Fletcher's  Purple  Island  and  which  is  pure  Elizabethan  even  in 
an  age  of  trim  paterres.  From  Cambridge  came  a  man  who  owed 
a  debt  to  the  school  of  the  Fletchers  although  he  was  too  large 
to  be  imprisoned  as  a  member,  John  Milton,  the  supreme  poet  of 
his  age,  who  learned  from  Spenser  much  of  the  eloquence  with 
which  he  wrought  his  great  religious  and  political  experiences 
into  immortal  song.  The  spirit  of  the  dreamer  of  The  Faerie 
Queene  was  not,  after  all,  so  far  remote  from  the  great  issues 
of  the  middle  decades  of  the  seventeenth  century.     These  poets. 


/T 


110  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

with  the  exception  of  Milton  (who,  like  all  supreme  artists,  knew 
how  to  reconcile  classicism  and  romanticism),  formed  one  of  the 
many  groups  of  seventeenth  century  poets  who  still  preferred  to 
worship  beauty  with  Elizabethan  exuberance  and  childlike 
enumeration  of  infinite  detail  rather  than  by  attention  to  finish, 
the  sense  of  finiteness,  of  repression  which  attracted  the  new 
classicists. 

Literary  anarchy  became  bewildering  toward  the  close  of  the 
century  because  English  poetry  had  fallen  among  little  men. 
During  the  last  two  decades  of  the  seventeenth  century,  except 
for  Dryden,  there  were  only  the  very  dregs.  The  various  warring 
creeds  quarreled  to  the  end.  Marinism,  which  found  its  most 
brilliant  supporter  in  Crashaw,  was  upheld  by  men  like  John 
Norris  of  Bemerton  in  his  Miscellanies  (1678).  Two  very  dif- 
ferent schools  worked  against  them:  the  boisterous  satirists  of 
the  type  of  John  Cleveland  and  Dr.  Robert  Wild,  who  battled 
with  the  decadent  poets  by  using  a  rugged  style  which  constantly 
broke  down  into  doggerel;  Waller,  Denham,  and  Sidney  Godol- 
phin,  who  fought  for  neo-classicism.  Then  there  was  the  great 
number  of  belated  Elizabethans,  the  school  of  the  Fletchers  and 
many  more.  These  men  were  generally  perfectly  conscious  of 
their  conservatism.  Mr.  Edmund  Gosse  notes  a  volume  by  Philip 
Ayres,  Lyric  poems,  made  in  Imitation  of  the  Italians,  as  ''the 
very  last  effort  made  to  restore  romantic  poetry  to  its  old  place 
in  English  literature."  There  were  some  who  inconsistently 
wrote  in  different  veins.  Such  a  man  was  Sir  Richard  Fanshawe, 
a  good  friend  of  the  classicist  Denham,  but  having  many  sym- 
pathies with  the  Elizabethans  and  Marinists.  In  1676  a  number 
of  his  miscellaneous  poems  appeared  along  with  his  translation  of 
Guarini's  II  Pastor  Fido.  A  Canto  of  the  Progress  of  Learning, 
though  in  Spenserian  stanzas,  is  far  less  florid  than  some  of  his 
sonnets  and  lyrics.  On  the  other  hand  its  opening  line,  * '  Tell  me, 
O  Muse,  and  tell  me  Spencer's  Ghost,"  seems  to  indicate  that  the 
master's  poetry  was  not  far  from  his  thoughts.  Again  he  trans- 
lated Virgil,  the  idol  of  the  Augustans,  in  the  Spenserian  stanza, 
a  form  quite  generally  regarded,  even  by  its  admirers  in  that  day. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  Ill 

as  unfit  for  heroic  poetry.  The  civil  wars  in  English  poetry  might 
easily  be  illustrated  far  beyond  due  proportion  in  this  study. 
Charles  Cotton  continued  at  once  the  wholesome  nature  poetry 
of  Browne,  Herrick,  and  Marvel  and  wrote  amorous  lyrics  in 
the  vein  of  Suckling,  Lovelace,  Carew,  men  who  cared  little 
for  the  quiet  country,  who  preferred  the  rustle  of  the  silk  j:,owns 
of  court  ladies  to  the  wind  among  the  trees.  Cowley's  eccentric 
Pindaric  odes  fell  into  disrepute  toward  the  close  of  the  century. 
Yet  Thomas  Flatman,  one  of  the  very  few  lyrists  who  wrote  with 
high  seriousness  at  the  end  of  the  century,  followed  Cowley  almost 
exclusively.  Flatman  ^s  friends,  Dr.  Samuel  Woodford,  the  Spen- 
serian, and  Katherine  Philips,  *'the  matchless  Orinda,"  wrote 
often  in  the  manner  of  Cowley.  Yet  Katherine  Philips,  with  her 
affected  elegance  and  her  importation  of  French  ideals  from  the 
Hotel  Eambouillet,  contributed  definitely  to  the  rise  of  neo- 
classicism.  Finally  Dryden,  who  was  to  give  the  death-blow  to 
Abraham  Cowley,  wrote  one  of  his  maturest  poems,  To  Mrs.  Anne 
Killegreiv,  (1686)  in  the  Pindaric  and  metaphysical  vein  of  the 
despised  poet.  Against  the  lyrics  of  the  court  amorists  we  may 
pit  the  long  line  of  religious  lyrics  from  Crashaw,  himself  as 
ardent  a  royalist  as  Lovelace  or  Suckling,  to  Vaughn.  In  the 
love-lyric,  too,  the  approach  of  the  dissolution  of  faith,  of  the 
Age  of  Anarchy,  may  be  seen  in  Habington's  Castara,  a  some- 
what uneasy,  overconscious  attempt  to  fuse  the  erotic  cavalier 
poetry  with  religion  and  Platonism,  utterly  unlike  the  fiery 
Platonism  of  the  Elizabethans.  Then  complete  cynicism  broke  in. 
At  the  close  of  the  century  Rochester,  Sedley,  Aphra  Behn,  and 
others  were  retailing  the  commonplaces  of  the  amorists,  striving 
to  eke  out  their  slender  originality  and  to  heal  their  shattered 
faith  in  the  finer  things  of  life  with  feverish  sensuality,  cynicism, 
and  obscenity.  Except  for  the  slow  and  hotly  contested  rise  of 
neo-classieism,  this  degradation  of  the  court  lyric  is  typical  of 
the  degradation  of  English  poetry.  Neo-classicism  promised  at 
least  a  wholesome  repression  in  style  and  a  theory,  if  no  more, 
of  the  moral  responsibility  of  poetry  in  its  highest  moods.  It 
promised  a  much  needed  increase  of  intellectuality  as  opposed  to 
unbridled  fancy. 


112  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

In  turning  to  the  heralds  of  Augustanism  we  must  never  for- 
get that  they  were  not  outside  the  influence  of  Spenser  and  did 
not  regard  Spenser  as  necessarily  opposed  to  their  regime.  We 
shall  see  how  they  came  more  and  more  to  reconcile  him  with 
their  ideals  much  as  they  reconciled  Virgil.  Sir  John  Denham 
classed  Spenser  and  Jonson  together  as  exponents  of  "Art"  as 
opposed  to  the  less  revered  native  woodnotes  wild  which  were 
falling  into  disrepute. 

"Next  (like  Aurora),  Spenser  rose 
Whose  purple  blush  the  day  foreshows; 
Old  Mother  Wit  and  Nature  gave 
Shakespeare   and   Fletcher   all    they   have, 
In  Spenser  and  in  Jonson,  Art 
Of  slower  Nature  got  the  start.  "2 

Edmund  Waller,  as  we  have  noted,  learned  his  devotion  to  finish 
from  Fairfax.  He  seems  to  have  returned  to  Spenser  as  well  for 
that  mellifluousness  which  is  characteristic  of  his  smooth,  sen- 
suous verse.  His  most  elaborate  poem,  The  Battle  of  the  Mid- 
summer Islands,  follows  Spenser  and  Fairfax  in  the  creation  of 
a  sort  of  tropical  Bower  of  Bliss,  or  Eden.^  A  reference  in  the 
third  canto  seems  to  show  that  Waller,  unlike  many  professed 
students  of  English  literature,  had  arrived  as  far  as  the  fifth 
book  of  The  Faerie  Queene.  For  he  describes  a  wounded  whale 
scourging  the  waves  *'like  Spenser's  Talus  with  his  iron  flail." 
Similarly  Katherine  Philips,  whom  we  have  described  as  mainly 
neo-classical,  draws  from  Spenser  to  adorn  a  polite  and  languid 
Sapphic  effusion.  Content,  To  my  dearest  Lucasia. 

"Content,  the  false  World's  best  disguise, 

The  search  and  faction  of  the  wise. 

Is  so  abstruse  and  hid  in  night 

That,  like  that  Fairy  Eed-Cross  ]S[night, 
Who  treacherous  Falsehood  for  clear  Truth  had  got. 
Men  think  they  have  it  when  they  have  it  not.'' 

But  it  was  Dryden  who  sanctified  Spenser  for  the  Augustans 
of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries.    With  Dryden  Eng- 


2  On  Mr.  Abraham  Cowley  *s  Death. 

3  Canto  I.    See  Mr.  G.  Thorn  Drury's  notes  on  this  poem  in  the  Muses' 
Library  edition  of  Waller. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  113 

lish  criticism  came  to  a  brilliant  climax  and  the  Age  of  Literary 
Anarchy  received  complete  and  powerful  expression.  England 
felt  a  growing  interest  in  the  superbly  unified  French  theories 
of  poetry,  but  found  them  practically  impossible  to  reconcile 
with  her  sturdy  native  traditions  and  the  restless  spirit  of  the 
age.  When  we  learn  to  realize  thoroughly  how  some  writers  took 
refuge  in  an  idolatrous  worship  of  the  classics,  how  others  clam- 
ored for  the  perpetuation  of  the  Elizabethan  manner,  how  many 
caught  up  th»  extravagances  of  the  English  Marinists,  the  attempt 
to  goad  jaded  emotions  with  the  highly  spiced  diet  of  jaded  con- 
ceits, and  carried  the  hectic  fancies  of  Cowley,  Crashaw,  and  their 
crew  to  excess  beyond  excess,  how  some  gave  up  hope  of  solution 
and  sought  false  relief  in  cynicism  and  rough  mockery,  how  the 
exquisite  idyllic  vein  of  Andrew  Marvel  could  turn  to  barren 
and  querulous  satire,  when  we  realize  that  it  was  the  day  of  a 
hundred  schools,  the  age  of  literary  anarchy,  as  it  was  the  age  of 
civil  broils  and  political  plots,  then  we  can  understand  Dryden 
with  some  human  sympathy.  In  Dryden 's  day  uncertainty  ran 
riot.  His  admirers  and  detractors  have  long  puzzled  over  his 
vacillations  in  matters  religious,  literary,  and  political.  How- 
ever servile  he  may  have  been,  it  is  difficult  to  deny  that  he  was 
a  man  of  strong  if  somewhat  fickle  convictions  that  changed,  not 
merely  with  the  breeze  of  public  opinion,  but  with  his  own  true 
moods.  Some  of  his  inconsistencies  are  readily  explainable  by  his 
enthusiasm  for  the  subject  under  immediate  consideration.  In 
his  Discourse  on  Epick  Poetry  (1697),  he  devoted  much  time  to 
proving  triumphantly,  in  spite  of  Aristotle,  that  heroic  poetry  is  a 
greater  form  than  tragedy.  But  in  his  Essay  of  Dramatick  Poesie 
(1667),  where  all  his  eloquence  was  being  spent  on  the  drama, 
he  did  not  even  pause  to  support  a  confident  parenthesis: 
''Though  tragedy  may  be  justly  preferred  to  the  other,"  [viz., 
epic].  In  his  Preface  to  the  second  Miscellany  (1685),  Spenser's 
endeavour  to  imitate  the  rustic  speech  of  Theocritus  by  an  infus- 
ion of  archaic  and  dialect  words  is  adjudged  unsuccessful. 

"Spenser  has  endeavoured  it  [to  imitate  the  Doric  of  Theocritus]  in 
his  Shepherds  Kalendar;  but  neither  will  it  succeed  in  English  [any  more 


114  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

than  in  the  severe  Latin  tongue]   for  which  reason  I  have  forbore  to 
attempt  it. ' ' 

Yet  in  his  Dedication  of  the  Pastorals  of  Virgil  (1697),  he  wrote : 

**But  Spencer  being  master  of  our  northern  dialect,  and  skilled  in 
Chaucer's  English,  has  so  exactly  imitated  the  Dorick  of  Theocritus,  that 
his  love  is  a  perfect  image  of  that  passion  which  God  infused  into  both 
sexes,  before  it  was  corrupted  with  the  knowledge  of  arts,  and  the  cere- 
monies of  what  we  call  good  manners." 

Without  pausing  to  consider  any  more  of  Dryden's  many 
self-contradictions,  we  may  turn  to  his  comments  on  Spenser  as 
disclosing  matters  most  significant  for  our  general  conception 
of  Dryden  as  a  critic.  His  first  reference  to  Spenser  occurs  in  a 
preface  Of  Heroic  Plays,  published  in  1672  with  an  edition  of 
The  Conquest  of  Granada,  where  he  merely  cites  The  Faerie 
Queene  in  support  of  the  use  of  gods,  spirits,  and  ''enthusiastic 
parts ' '  in  poetry.  In  his  youth  Dryden,  like  many  young  writers, 
was  a  victim  of  the  poets  of  his  own  generation.  His  early  servi- 
tude to  the  conceit-hunters  is  well  known.  He  himself  tells  us 
in  his  Dedication  of  The  Spanish  Friar  (1681),  that  he  once 
thought  "inimitable  Spenser  a  mean  poet  in  comparison  of  Syl- 
vester's Dubartas."  But  he  came  to  dub  the  idol  of  his  callow 
days  a  writer  of  ' '  abominable  fustian. '  * 

In  his  maturity  Dryden  spoke  enthusiastically  and  discern- 
ingly about  Spenser.  In  his  Essay  on  Satire  (1693),  he  made  his 
most  elaborate  criticism.  In  a  long  digression  on  heroic  poetry, 
in  which  he  asserted  that  no  one  equalled  Homer  and  Virgil,  he 
criticised  Lucan,  Statins,  Ariosto,  and  Tasso,  scorned  utterly  the 
French  epics,  and  added : 

**The  English  have  only  to  boast  of  Spenser  and  Milton,  who  neither 
of  them  wanted  either  genius  or  learning,  to  have  been  perfect  poets; 
and  yet,  both  of  them  are  liable  to  many  censures.  For  there  is  no  uni- 
formity in  the  design  of  Spenser:  he  aims  at  the  accomplishment  of  no 
one  action:  he  raises  up  a  hero  for  every  one  of  his  adventures;  and 
endows  each  of  them  with  some  particular  moral  virtue  which  renders 
them  all  equal,  without  subordination  or  performance.  Every  one  is 
most  valiant  in  his  own  legend;  only  we  must  do  them  that  justice  to 
observe,  that  magnanimity,  which  is  the  character  of  prince  Arthur, 
shines  throughout  the  whole  poem;  and  succours  the  rest,  when  they  are 
in  distress.     The  original  of  every  knight  was  then  living  in  the  court 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  115 

of  queen  Elizabeth;  and  he  attributed  to  each  of  them,  that  virtue  which 
he  thought  most  conspicuous  in  them:  an  ingenious  piece  of  flattery, 
though  it  turned  not  much  to  his  account.  Had  he  lived  to  finish  the 
Poem,  in  the  six  remaining  legends,  it  had  certainly  been  more  of  a 
piece;  but  could  not  have  been  perfect,  because  the  model  was  not  true. 
But  prince  Arthur,  or  his  chief  patron.  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  whom  he 
intended  to  make  happy  by  the  marriage  of  his  Gloriana,  dying  before 
him,  deprived  the  Poet  both  of  means  and  spirit  to  accomplish  his  design: 
for  the  rest  his  obsolete  language  and  ill  choice  of  his  stanzas,  are 
faults  but  of  the  second  magnitude;  for,  notwithstanding  the  first,  he  is 
still  intelligible,  at  least  after  a  little  practice:  and  for  the  last,  he  is 
the  more  to  be  admired,  that,  labouring  under  such  a  difficulty,  his  verses 
are  so  numerous,  so  various,  and  harmonious,  that  only  Virgil,  whom  he 
professedly  imitated,  has  surpassed  him  among  the  Komans;  and  only 
Mr.  Waller  among  the  English."  y 

It  is  important  to  observe  that  this  very  just  criticism  of  the  y^ 
general  structure  of  The  Faerie  Queene  began  with  Dryden  and 
has  become  the  current  comment  to  our  own  day.  Even  Thomas 
Warton  had  nothing  to  add  to  it.  It  is  moreover  worth  special 
attention  that  Dryden  did  not  share  Jonson's  and  Davenant's 
aversion  for  the  use  of  obsolete  words.  Nor  did  he  always  regard 
them  as  even  "faults  of  the  second  magnitude."  We  have  seen 
that  he  first  condemned  but  later  praised  the  archaisms  in  The 
Shepheards  Calender.  And  in  his  discussion  of  Milton  in  this 
same  digression  in  the  Essay  on  Satire  he  treats  archaisms  with  a 
justice  that  is  beyond  reproach : 


*'His  [Milton's]  antiquated  words  were  his  choice,  not  his  necessity; 
for  therein  he  imitated  Spenser  as  Spenser  imitated  Chaucer.  And  though, 
perhaps,  the  love  of  their  master  may  have  transported  both  too  far,  in 
the  frequent  use  of  them;  yet,  in  my  opinion  words  may  then  be  laud- 
ably revived,  when  either  they  are  more  sounding  or  more  significant, 
than  those  in  practice;  and,  when  their  obscurity  is  taken  away,  by  join- 
ing other  words  to  them  which  clear  the  sense;  according  to  the  rule  of 
Horace,  for  the  admission  of  new  words.  But  in  both  cases  a  moderation 
is  to  be  observed  in  the  use  of  them.  For  unnecessary  coinage,  as  well 
as  unnecessary  revival  runs  into  affectation;  a  fault  to  be  avoided  on 
either  hand. ' ' 

Dryden 's  association  of  the  names  of  Spenser  and  Virgil  in 
the  discussion  of  the  structure  of  The  Faerie  Queene  quoted  above 
is  only  one  of  many  passages  that  indicate  that  Spenser  and  the 
darling  of  the  neo-classicists  were  endeared  to  him  as  poetical 


X 


116  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

comrades.     In  his  Discourse  on  Epick  Poetry   (1697)   Dryden 

wrote : 

**I  must  acknowledge  that  Virgil  in  Latin  and  Spencer  in  English, 
have  been  my  masters. ' ' 

Again : 

**If  the  design  be  good  and  the  draught  be  true,  the  colouring  is  the 
first  beauty  that  strikes  the  eye.  Spencer  and  Milton  are  the  nearest,  in 
English,  to  Virgil  and  Horace  in  Latin;  and  I  have  endeavoured  to  form 
my  style  by  imitating  their  masters." 

The  association  of  Virgil  and  Spenser  is  very  significant  because 
it  throws  a  clear  light  on  an  aspect  of  neo-classicism  completely 
misunderstood.  The  Augustans  did  not,  as  has  been  so  con- 
stantly averred,  forget  or  despise  Spenser.  They  found  him,  on 
the  whole,  sufficiently  reconcilable  with  their  ideals  and  appre- 
ciated sides  of  his  poetry  to  which  the  romanticists,  to  our  own 
day,  have  remained  blind.  Dryden  taught  the  Augustans  to 
accept  Virgil  and  Spenser  as  common  models.  The  cherished 
project  of  his  own  life  was  to  write  an  epic  about  Arthur,  the 
hero  of  The  Faerie  Queene,  or  the  Black  Prince,  ''wherein,  after 
Virgil  and  Spenser,  I  would  have  taken  occasion  to  represent 
my  living  friends  and  patrons  of  noblest  families,  and  also 
shadowed  the  events  of  future  ages,  in  the  succession  of  our  Im- 
perial lines."*  But  he  was  unfortunately  encouraged  only  by 
the  "fair  words  of  Charles  II"  and  ''my  little  salary  ill  paid." 
But  the  thorn  which  seems  to  have  pricked  the  sides  of  all  who 
read  Dryden,  devoutly  or  sacrilegiously,  is  his  admiration  for 
the  faultless  commonplaces  of  Waller  and  Denham  with  their 
rippling  heroic  couplets.  In  his  Dedication  of  The  Rival  Ladies 
(1672)  Dryden  asserted  of  "rhyme"  that: 

"The  excellence  and  dignity  of  it  were  never  fully  known  till  Mr. 
Waller  taught  it. ' ' 

In  the  Defence  of  the  Epilogue  to  The  Conquest  of  Granada  he 
said: 

"Well-placing  of  words,  for  the  sweetness  of  pronunciation,  was  not 
known  till  Mr.  Waller  introduced  it." 


4  The  Essay  on  Satire. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  117 

By  the  time  we  arrive  at  the  Essay  of  Dramatick  Poesie  (1667) 
we  become  belligerent  when  we  read : 

"They  [the  Elizabethans]  can  produce  ....  nothing  so  even  sweet, 
and  flowing  as  Mr.  Waller  nothing  so  majestic,  so  correct,  as  Sir  John 
Denham. ' ' 

In  the  Essay  on  Satire,  to  be  sure,  this  fetish-worship  lends  op- 
portunity for  gratifying  praise  of  Spenser  and  a  new  interweav- 
ing of  his  name  with  Virgil's.  For,  having  been  advised  by  Sir 
George  Mackenzie  to  imitate  "the  turns  of  Mr.  Waller  and  Sir 
John  Denham, "  it  "  first  made  me  sensible  to  my  own  wants,  and 
brought  me  afterwards  to  seek  for  the  supply  of  them  in  other 
English  authors.''  Not  even  "the  darling  of  my  youth,  the 
famous  Cowley,"  rewarded  a  search. 

' '  Then  I  consulted  a  greater  genius  (without  offense  to  the  manes  of 
that  noble  author)  I  mean  Milton;  but  as  he  endeavours  everywhere  to 
express  Homer,  whose  age  had  not  arrived  to  that  fineness,  I  found  in  him 
a  true  sublimity,  lofty  thoughts  which  were  clothed  with  admirable 
Grecisms,  and  ancient  words  which  he  had  been  digging  from  the  mines 
of  Chaucer  and  Spenser,  and  which,  with  all  their  rusticity,  had  some- 
what of  venerable  in  them.  At  last  I  had  recourse  to  his  master, 
Spenser,  the  author  of  that  immortal  poem  called  The  Fairy  Queen;  and 
there  I  met  with  that  which  I  had  been  looking  for  so  long  in  vain. 
Spenser  had  studied  Virgil  to  as  much  advantage  as  Milton  had  done 
Homer  and  among  the  rest  of  his  excellencies,  had  copied  that." 

This  is  truly  mellifluous  to  the  ear  of  the  ardent  Spenserian. 

But  a  famous  passage  in  the  Preface  to  the  Fables  (1700),  the 

brilliant  work  of  Dryden's  maturity,  has    been    most    unduly 

exalted  into  prominence  and  cited  as  an  example  of  that  crass- 

ness  which  is  said  to  have  tainted  even  the  large  mind  of  Dryden 

in  an  age  of  literary  narrowness.    We  expect  only  the  choicest 

wisdom  in  this  preface.    We  gloat  over  the  damnation  of  the  once 

revered  Cowley.    We  breathe  the  fire  of  the  noble  eloquence  which 

exalts  Chaucer.     But,  as  Dryden's  thought  reverts  to  metrics, 

our  enthusiasm  grows  pale. 

''Equality  of  numbers  in  every  verse  which  we  call  heroick,  was 
either  not  known  or  not  always  practised  in  Chaucer's  age.  .  .  .  We  can 
only  say  that  he  lived  in  the  infancy  of  our  poetry,  and  that  nothing  is 
brought  to  perfection  at  first.  We  must  be  children  before  we  grow  men. 
There  was  an  Ennius,  and  in  process  of  time  a  Lucilius  and  a  Lucretius 
before  Virgil  and  Horace.     Even  after  Chaucer,  there  was  a  Spencer,  a 


118  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.    [Vol.  2 

Harrington,  a  Fairfax,  before  Waller  and  Denham  were  in  being  and  our 
numbers  were  in  their  nonage  till  these  appeared. '^ 

These  sentences  have  brought  reproach  on  the  memory  of 
Dryden.  It  is  surprising  to  see  how  widespread  is  the  opinion 
that  here  Dryden,  in  his  splendid  maturity,  capriciously  expressed 
a  senile  preference  for  Waller  and  Denham  over  Chaucer  and 
Spenser.  But  it  is  to  be  observed  that  most  of  Dryden 's  refer- 
ences to  Denham  and  Waller  have  to  do  with  technique — and 
with  the  technique  of  the  heroic  couplet  solely.  It  is  the  ' '  num- 
bers" and  ''rhyme'*  (which  readers  of  the  Essay  of  Dramatick 
Poesie  will  recognize  as  practically  technical  terms  for  the  coup- 
let) which  Dryden  admired  in  Waller  and  Denham.  When  Dry- 
den wrote  of  the  peers  of  the  ancients  and  considered  poetry  in 
all  its  aspects  he  praised  Chaucer,  Tasso,  Spenser,  Jonson,  Shake- 
speare, Milton,  and  Corneille  in  the  highest  terms.  But  Waller 
and  Denham  were  not  mentioned.  That  he  did  not  rate  mere 
technique  highest  among  the  qualifications  of  a  poet  is  proved 
by  a  glance  at  his  preference  for  Chaucer  over  Ovid  in  the 
Preface  to  the  Fables.  From  his  point  of  view  Chaucer  was  an 
inferior  metrist.  The  best  he  could  say  of  Chaucer 's  melody  was 
that  "there  is  the  rude  sweetness  of  a  Scotch  tune  in  it,  which 
is  natural  and  pleasing  though  not  perfect.''  As  a  confirmed 
lover  of  Latin  poetry  he  could  not  but  greatly  prefer  the  artful 
cadences  of  Ovid's  lines,  though  he  was  probably  not  blind  to 
their  saccharine  qualities  as  compared  with  the  stronger  music 
of  Virgil.  But,  though  he  was  emphatic  in  favor  of  Ovid's 
metrical  superiority,  the  Latin  poet  came  off  very  badly  in  the 
comparison  and  was  ranked  definitely  below  Chaucer.  It  is  evi- 
dent that  he  ranked  Chaucer,  whom  he  considered  somewhat 
primitive,  far  above  Ovid,  a  poet  of  the  days  of  a  great  nation's 
mature  culture  and  formal  perfection.  By  the  same  token  it  is 
not  fanciful  to  argue  that  while  Dryden  considered  Waller  and 
Denham  to  be  great  as  the  perfectors  of  the  popular  heroic  coup- 
let of  the  day,  he  would  not  have  dreamed  a  moment  of  placing 
them  as  high  as  Chaucer,  Spenser,  and  Milton. 

We  have  observed  that  whenever  Dryden  took  a  poet  or  an 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  119 

ideal  as  the  topic  of  an  essay  or  a  text  for  the  exploitation  of  a 
pet  theory  he  exalted  the  subject  with  a  youthful  enthusiasm 
for  the  interest  of  the  hour  and  a  fine  indifference  to  what  he 
had  ever  said  before.  When  we  consider  the  consistent  and  high 
praise  in  his  many  references  to  Spenser,  it  does  not  seem  illogi- 
cal to  suppose  that  had  he  written  an  essay  on  his  acknowledged 
master  he  would  have  glowed  with  an  eloquence  sublimated  with 
his  patriotic  preference  for  English  poets  over  the  ancients  and 
over  the  immaculate  French  rule-worshippers.^  As  it  is,  he  has 
left  some  generalizations  on  Spenser  that  are  at  once  in  the  spirit 
of  warm  and  rational  admiration.  In  the  Discourse  on  Epick 
Poetry  he  found  that  ''the  file  of  heroick  poets  is  very  short." 
There  had  been  only  one  Iliad  and  Aeneid. 

"After  these  are  entered  some  Lord  Chamberlain  should  be  appointed, 
some  critick  of  an  authority  should  be  set  before  the  door  to  keep  out  a 
crowd  of  little  poets,  who  press  for  admission,  and  are  not  of  quality. 
.  .  .  The  next,  but  the  next  with  a  long  intervall  betwixt  was  the 
Jerusalem;  I  mean  not  so  much  in  distance  of  time  as  in  excellency.'' 

Pulci,  Bojardo,  Ariosto,  Le  Moine,  Scudery,  Chapelain  are  hud- 
dled together  and  receive  scant  grace.    But : 

''Spencer  has  a  better  plea  for  his  Fairy  Queen  had  his  action  been 
finished,  or  had  been  one;  and  Milton,  if  the  devil  had  not  been  his  hero, 
instead  of  Adam.  .  .  .  After  these  the  rest  of  our  English  poets  shall  not 
be  mentioned.  I  have  that  honour  for  them  which  I  ought  to  have;  but 
if  they  are  worthies,  they  are  not  to  be  ranked  amongst  the  three  whom 
I  have  named,  and  who  are  established  in  their  reputation. ' ' 

In  the  same  essay  we  are  told  that : 

"Spenser  wanted  only  to  have  read  the  rules  of  Bossu;  for  no  man  was 
ever  born  with  a  greater  genius,  or  had  more  knowledge  to  support  it.  "6 

Today  we  voice  precisely  the  same  complaints  against  Spenser's 
form.  To  be  sure,  we  fancy  that  we  could  prescribe  something 
better  than  the  fossilized  Bossu.  But  though  we  all  bow  to  Spen- 
ser 's  marvellous  genius  we  wish,  with  Dry  den,  that  he  had  chosen 


5  See  the  Essay  of  Dramatick  Poesie  for  his  preference  for  English  and 
modern  poetry. 

« Luke  Melbourne,  a  contentious  parson,  gained  much  notoriety,  includ- 
irg  a  savage  trust  from  Pope  (Essay  on  Criticism,  11.  462,  sq.)  for  a  book 
o^-  observations  on  Dryden's  translation  of  Virgil.  But  Melbourne  at  least 
made  just  and  grim  sport  of  Dryden's  prescription  of  Bossu  for  Spenser. 


120  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

or  perfected  a  mould  more  vertebrate  into  which  to  pour  the 
immense  treasures  of  his  mind.  In  the  Dedication  of  his  transla- 
tion of  the  Pastorals  of  Virgil  (1697)  Dryden,  besides  praising 
the  ^  *  imitation '  ^  of  the  Doric  of  Theocritus,  as  before  noted,  gave 
Spenser  the  highest  rank  among  the  shepherd-poets.  Having 
discussed  the  bucolics  of  Theocritus  and  Virgil  he  added : 

"Our  own  nation  has  produced  a  third  poet  in  this  kind,  not  inferior 
to  the  two  former.  For  the  Shepherd's  Calendar  of  Spencer  is  not  to  be 
matched  in  any  modern  language,  not  even  by  Tasso  's  Aminta,  which 
infinitely  transcends  Guarini's  Pastor-Fido,  as  having  more  of  nature  in 
it,  and  being  almost  wholly  clear  from  the  wretched  affectation  of  learn- 
ing. I  will  say  nothing  of  the  piscatory  eclogues,  because  no  modern 
Latin  can  bear  criticism.  It  is  no  wonder  that  rolling  down  through  so 
many  barbarous  ages,  from  the  spring  of  Virgil,  it  bears  along  with  it 
the  filth  and  ordures  of  the  Goths  and  Vandals.  Neither  will  I  mention 
Monsieur  Fontenelle,  the  living  glory  of  the  French.  It  is  enough  for 
him  to  have  excelled  his  master,  Lucian,  without  attempting  to  compare 
our  miserable  age  with  that  of  Virgil  or  Theocritus.  Let  me  only  add, 
for  his  reputation, 

si  Pergama  dextra 

Defendi   possent,    etiam   hac   defensa   fuissent. 

But  Spencer  being  master  of  our  northern  dialect,  and  skilled  in  Chaucer 's 
English,  has  so  exactly  imitated  the  Dorick  of  Theocritus,  that  his  love 
is  a  perfect  image  of  that  passion  which  God  infused  into  both  sexes, 
before  it  was  corrupted  with  the  knowledge  of  arts,  and  the  ceremonies 
of  what  we  call  good  manners." 

The  obvious  conclusions  from  these  citations  certainly  add 
little  but  lustre  to  Dryden 's  fame  as  a  critic.  Mr.  Waller  and  Mr. 
Denham  are  given  credit  only  for  what  they  actually  accom- 
plished. To  be  sure,  Dryden  overrated  the  heroic  couplet,  which 
from  his  point  of  view  they  perfected,  as  a  measure.  But  it  is 
absurd  to  suppose  that  he  placed  them,  on  these  grounds,  above 
the  acknowledged  masters  of  English  poetry.  As  for  Spenser, 
no  man  has  praised  more  nobly  and  more  rationally  than  Dryden. 
We  have  little  occasion  to  question  the  opinions  of  those  who  hold 
him  to  be  the  greatest  English  critic. 

Thomas  Rymer  interests  us  because  he  was  an  important  man 
in  his  own  day,  because  he  espoused  neo-classicism,  in  an  age  of 
struggle  and  doubt,  with  an  uncompromising  faith,  and  because 
he  shows  how  readily  the  Augustans  reconciled  Spenser,  on  the 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  121 

whole,  with  their  ideals.     In  his  preface  to  the  translation  of 

Rapin's  Reflections  on  Aristotle's  Treatise  of  Poesie  (1674)  he 

wrote : 

"Spencer,  I  think,  may  be  reckoned  the  first  of  our  Heroick  Poets; 
he  had  a  large  spirit,  a  sharp  judgement,  and  a  Genius  for  Heroick  Poesie, 
perhaps  above  any  that  ever  writ  since  Virgil.  But  our  misfortune  is, 
he  wanted  a  true  Idea,  and  lost  himself  by  following  an  unfaithful  guide. 
Though  besides  Homer  and  Virgil,  he  had  read  Tasso,  yet  he  rather 
suffer 'd  himself  to  be  misled  by  Ariosto;  with  whom  blindly  rambling  on 
marvellous  adventures  he  makes  no  conscience  of  Probability.  All  is 
fanciful  and  chimerical,  without  any  uniformity,  without  any  foundation 
in  truth;  his  Poem  is  perfect  Fairy-land.  .  .  .  They  who  can  love  Ariosto 
will  be  ravish 'd  with  Spencer,  whilst  men  of  juster  thoughts  lament  that 
such  great  Wits  have  miscarried  in  their  Travels  for  want  of  direction 
to  set  them  in  the  right  way.  But  the  truth  is,  in  Spencer's  time,  Italy 
itself  was  not  well  satisfied  with  Tasso;  and  few  amongst  them  would 
allow  that  he  had  excell'd  their  divine  Ariosto.  And  it  was  the  vice  of 
these  times  to  affect  superstitiously  the  Allegory;  and  nothing  would 
then  be  current  without  a  mystical  meaning.  We  must  blame  the  Italians 
for  debauching  great  Spencer's  judgement;  and  they  cast  him  on  the 
unlucky  choice  of  the  stanza  which  in  no  wise  is  proper  for  our  Lan- 
guage." 

In  1675  Edward  Phillips  published  his  Theatrum  Poetarum 
Anglicanorum,  a  work  which  became  very  popular  as  a  handbook 
of  criticisms  and  accounts  of  English  Poets,  and  from  which 
writers  of  similar  treatises,  Gerard  Langbaine,  William  Win- 
stanley,  and  others,  borrowed  with  great  freedom.  Critics  have 
doubtless  been  right  in  ascribing  some  of  the  real  wisdom  and 
largeness  of  Phillips'  utterances  to  the  influence  of  his  uncle, 
Milton.  Thus  it  was,  perhaps,  that  he  never  bowed  in  blind  wor- 
ship to  the  heroic  couplet.  Indeed  his  curious  preference  of  an 
irregular  lyrical  verse,  which  he  called  ' '  Pindarick, ' '  to  the  coup- 
let for  tragedy  suggests  that  his  mind  may  have  been  full  of  the 
rafified  choruses  of  Samson  Agonistes.  The  keynote  of  his  atti- 
tude toward  poetry  is  opposed  to  the  Augustan  worship  of  reason 
and  sounds  like  Milton. 

"Wit,  ingenuity  and  learning  in  verse,  even  elegancy  itself,  though 
that  comes  nearest,  are  one  thing;  true  native  poetry  is  another;  in 
which  there  is  a  certain  air  and  spirit,  which,  perhaps,  the  most  learned 
and  judicious  in  other  arts  do  not  perfectly  apprehend;  much  less  is  it 
attainable  by  any  study  or  industry." 


122  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

His  appreciation  of  the  Spenserian  stanza  is  notable  and  almost 
unique  in  his  period. 

''How  much  more  stately  and  majestic  in  epic  poems,  especially  of 
heroic  argument,  Spenser's  stanza  (which  I  take  to  be  but  an  improve- 
ment upon  Tasso  's  Ottava  Eima,  or  the  Ottava  Rima  itself,  used  by  many 
of  our  once-esteemed  poets)  is  above  the  way,  either  of  couplet,  or  altera- 
tion of  four  verses  only,  I  am  persuaded  were  it  revived,  would  soon  be 
acknowledged. ' ' 

Phillips  may  have  influenced  Dr.  Samuel  Woodford  who  pub- 
lished, in  1679,  A  Paraphrase  Upon  the  Canticles  with  a  preface 
that  is  full  of  interest  for  us. 

"Among  the  several  other  Papers  that  we  have  lost  of  the  Excellent 
and  Divine  Spenser,  one  of  the  happiest  Poets  that  this  Nation  ever 
bred  (and  out  of  it  the  world  it  may  be  (all  things  considered)  had  not 
his  Fellow,  excepting  only  such  as  were  immediately  Inspired)  I  bewail 
nothing  methinks  so  much,  as  his  Version  of  the  Canticles.  For  doubt- 
less, in  my  poor  Judgement,  never  was  Man  better  made  for  such  a  Work, 
and  the  Song  itself  as  directly  suited,  with  his  Genius  and  manner  of 
Poetry  (that  I  mean  wherein  he  best  shews  and  even  excels  himself,  His 
Shepherd's  Kalender,  and  other  occasional  Poems,  for  I  cannot  yet  say 
the  same  directly  for  his  Faery  Queen  designed  for  an  Heroic  Poem) 
that  it  could  not  but  from  him  receive  the  last  Perfection,  whereof  it 
was  capable  out  of  its  original. '' 

Woodford's  eccentric  notions  and  terrifying  plesiosaurian  sen- 
tences do  not  prove  that  he  was  out  of  the  literary  world  of  his 
day.  He  was  the  friend  of  Sprat,  the  famous  biographer  of 
Cowley,  and  seems  to  have  commanded  no  small  respect  from 
Flatman,  **the  matchless  Orinda,"  and  other  distinguished  con- 
temporaries that  are  now  with  the  snows  of  yesteryear.  His 
opinions  are  always  interesting  and  often  sound  and  suggestive. 
He  thinks  that  couplets  are  best  in  an  heroic  poem,  *'as  in  Mr. 
Cowley's  Davideis  (for  the  Quatrains  of  Sir  William  Davenant, 
and  the  Stanza  of  Nine  in  Spenser 's  Faery  Queen,  which  are  but 
an  Improvement  of  the  Ottava  Rima,  to  instance  in  no  more, 
seem  not  to  me  so  proper)."  But  that  he  had  some  admiration 
for  the  Spenserian  stanza,  for  other  purposes,  seems  certain,  for 
he  employed  it  himself  in  his  most  pretentious  poem,  The  Legend 
of  Love. 

In  his  paraphrase  of  the  Canticles  Woodford  carried  the 
dialogue-setting  of  Quarles   (S ion's  Sonnets)   even  farther  and 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  123 

attempted  an  approximation  of  the  classical  drama  and  the  classi- 
cal epithalamium.  The  verses  are  not  only  assigned  to  the  Spouse 
and  the  Beloved  but  to  the  friends  on  either  side  and  to  a  chorus. 
"Woodford  takes  occasion,  incidentally,  to  condemn  blank  verse  as 
used  by  Milton,  though  he  is  an  enthusiastic  lover  of  Paradise 
Lost.  For  blank  verse,  he  thinks,  as  ''likest  prose,"  is  unfit  for 
any  form  but  the  drama.  The  Song  of  Solomon  may  be  divided, 
he  thinks,  into  such  parts  as  a  Protasis,  the  **  Divine  Amoris 
Ecstasis,  an  Epitasis  or  the  counterturn  of  action,  the  Dolor  de 
Absentia  Sponsi,"  and  a  third  division.  The  unity  of  action, 
we  are  told,  is  ''strictly  observed  in  this  Hymn,  and  the  Chorus, 
which  is  everywhere  regular."  In  short,  Woodford  is  a  com- 
pound of  the  Spenserians,  the  Marinists,  and  the  neo-classicists, 
a  very  characteristic  poet  of  the  late  seventeenth  century. 

To  his  version  of  the  Canticles  Woodford  prefixed  a  stern 
Proazma  bidding  the  profane  to  ''avoid."  He  was  evidently 
somewhat  disturbed  over  the  possible  influence  of  the  Oriental 
love-language.  In  his  preface  he  was  scandalized  by  some  un- 
speakable freethinkers  who  dared  to  murmur  that  the  Song  of 
Solomon  might,  after  all,  be  a  literal  love-lyric  and  have  nothing 
to  do  with  an  allegory  of  Christ  and  the  Church.  To  make  his 
cheveux  de  frise  perfect  against  any  loose  lovers  of  wanton  lyrics 
who  should  chance  on  his  ground  in  search  of  amorous  poetry  to 
their  taste,  he  added  his  moralistic  Epoda  or  Legend  of  Love,  imi- 
tated partly  from  Spenser's  Hymne  to  Divine  Love  and  partly 
from  the  pageant  of  the  Seven  Deadly  Sins  in  The  Faerie  Queene. 
We  may  let  Woodford  describe  its  content  in  his  own  words.  After 
defending  his  use  of  the  term  ' '  Epoda, ' '  he  says : 

*'The  ^Legend,'  further,  of  'Love'  I  have  stiled  it,  for  honour's  sake 
to  the  great  Spenser,  whose  Stanza  of  Nine  I  have  used,  and  who  has 
Intituled  the  six  Books  which  we  have  compleat  of  his  Faery  Queen,  by 
the  several  Legends  of  Holiness,  Temperance,  Chastity,  Friendship  Jus- 
tice and  Courtesy,  and  to  any  who  knows  what  the  word  Legend  there, 
or  in  its  true  and  first  notion  signifies,  it  will  neither  seem  strange, 
ridiculous,  or  improper.  I  have  made  it  to  consist  of  three  Cantos,  agree- 
able enough  to  the  nature  of  an  Epode  or  Legend,  if  it  be  judged  indecent, 
as  indeed  it  is,  considering  its  length,  for  an  Epilogue;  the  first  whereof 
taking  occasion  from  the  Canticles,  to  which  in  the  beginning  it  refers, 


124  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

I  have  endeavoured  to  shew  the  true  Nature  of  Love,  and  what  it  was  in 
the  State  of  Innocence,  describing  it  by  the  liveliest  Images,  which  I 
form  to  myself  suitable  to  a  poetical  composition.  In  the  second  I  have 
considered  the  thing  whatever  it  be,  vulgarly  called  Love,  under  the 
dominion  and  government  of  Sense,  exclusive  of  Reason,  which  it  too 
often  either  draws  to  its  party  or  wholly  extinguishes,  than  which  noth- 
ing can  be  conceived  more  absurd,  unreasonable,  extravagant,  and 
inhumane.  The  third  canto,  in  the  close  of  it,  is  designed  for  the  Eestau- 
ration  of  Love,  by  Sacred  Marriage,  or  Wedlock,  according  to  the  Divine 
Institution,  to  its  ancient  Dignity  and  Lustre." 

John  Sheffield,  Earl  of  Mulgrave  and  Duke  of  Buckingham- 
shire, published  in  1682  a  very  clever  Essay  on  Poetry  in  the  last 
couplet  of  which  he  asserted  that  the  ideal  poet 

**Must  above  Cowley,  nay,  and  Milton  too,  prevail 
Succeed  where  great  Torquato   and  our  greater  Spenser  fail." 

In  the  edition  of  1713  he  revised  these  lines,  significantly  striking 
out  the  name  of  Cowley,  who  had  then  been  dashed  from  the 
firmament  of  poets.    Here  he  decided  that  the  poet 
* '  Must  above  Milton 's  lofty  flights  prevail 
Succeed  where  Spenser  and  even  Torquato  fail." 

In  1723  the  couplet  was  made  to  read : 
*'Must  above  Tasso's  lofty  flights  prevail. 
Succeed  where  Spenser  and  even  Milton  fail. ' ' 

Dr.  Johnson  was  the  first  to  comment  on  these  revisions  as  a  mark 
of  the  increase  of  Milton 's  fame.  But  they  have  another  import- 
ance as  well.  The  names  of  Tasso,  Spenser,  and  Milton  were 
plainly  not  marshalled  merely  to  make  a  high-sounding  couplet, 
but  the  shifts  in  the  order  and  the  omission  of  Cowley  indicate 
that  these  men  were  carefully  selected  because  of  their  eminence 
and,  most  probably,  with  a  shrewd  eye  to  their  popular  eminence. 
I  must  not  omit  some  lines  from  a  satire  by  John  Oldham 
(Poems  and  Translations  1683)  because,  though  their  connection 
with  Spenserian  criticism  is  of  the  slightest,  there  is  something 
in  their  grim  despair  that  is  typical  of  the  poet 's  attitude  at  the 
end  of  the  seventeenth  century.  Poets  are  always  complaining 
that  their  times  care  not  for  the  muse.  But  there  is  something 
in  the  raw  power  of  these  lines  that  is  more  than  the  proper  and 
customary  protest  against  the  indifference  to  those  who  practice 
the  humble  slighted  shepherd's  trade. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  125 

*'Oiie  night,  as  I  was  pondering  of  late 
On  all  the  miseries  of  my  hapless  Fate, 
Cursing  my  rhiming  Stars,  raving  in  vain 
At  all  the  Pow.'rs,  who  over  Poets  reign: 
In  came  a  ghastly  Shape,  all  pale  and  thin, 
As  some  poor  Sinner,  who  by  Priest  had  been 
Under  a  long  Lent's  Penance,  starv'd  and  whip'd. 
Or   par-boil'd   Lecher,   late   from   Hot-house    crept: 
Famish 'd  his  Looks  appear 'd  his  eyes  sunk  in, 
Like  Morning-Gown  about  him  hung  his  Skin:  { 

A  Wreath  of  Laurel  on  his  Head  he  wore, 
A  book  inscribed  the  Fairy  Queen  he  bore." 

This  spectre,  who  is  no  other  than  Spenser  himself,  dissuades  the 
young  poet  from  the  unrewarded  allegiance  to  the  muses.  It  is 
difficult  to  realize  that  this  harsh,  crude  verse  was  written  by 
a  poet  highly  esteemed  in  his  day.  But  Dryden  wrote  one  of  his 
noblest,  most  genuine  poems  in  his  memory.  Crude  as  these 
verses  are,  they  show  a  spirit  much  more  real  than  the  complaints 
of  the  Elizabethan  shepherd-poets  in  the  Age  of  Enthusiasm  and 
are  much  more  manly  than  the  everlasting  whines  of  our  dis- 
gruntled magazine  poets  of  the  twentieth  century  against  com- 
mercialism.   They  show  a  feeling  for  a  real  fin  de  siecle. 

In  Sir  William  Temple's  essay  Of  Poetry  (1685)  Ariosto, 
Tasso,  and  Spenser  are  selected  as  the  three  supreme  modern 
poets  to  name  with  the  Ancients. 

*' After  these  three  I  know  none  of  the  Moderns  that  have  made  any 
achievements  in  Heroic  poetry  worth  recording.'' 

Of  Spenser  in  particular  he  wrote : 

"Spenser  endeavoured  to  supply  this  with  morality  to  make  instruc- 
tion instead  of  story,  the  subject  of  an  epic  poem.  His  execution  was 
excellent  and  his  flights  of  fancy  very  noble  and  high,  but  his  design 
was  poor,  and  his  moral  lay  so  bare  that  it  lost  the  effect. ' ' 

Those  timid  tasters  of  The  Faerie  Queene  who  believe  with 
Lowell  that  the  allegory  is  the  grit  in  the  dish  of  strawberries 
and  cream,  will  find  this  critcism  in  some  accord  with  their  views, 
views. 

William  Winstanley  has  been  long  spurned  as  a  wretched 
barber  and  a  graceless  thief  from  the  writings  of  Edward 
Phillips.  In  his  account  of  Spenser  {Lives  of  the  most  famous 
English  Foets,  1686),  he  referred  to  him  as: 


126  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

''Especially  very  happy  in  English  Poetry,  as  his  learned,  elaborate 
Works  do  declare  ....  and  though  some  blame  his  Writings  for  the 
many  Chaucerisms  used  by  him,  yet  to  the  Learned  they  are  known  not 
to  be  blemishes  but  rather  beauties  to  his  Book. '  "^ 

Again : 

''But  his  main  Book,  and  which  I  think  Envy  itself  cannot  carp  at, 
was  his  Fairy  Queen,  a  Work  of  such  ingenuous  composure  as  will  last  as 
long  as  time  endures.'^ 

In  1694  Sir  Thomas  Pope  Blount  brought  out  a  collection  of 
remarks  on  poets  and  poetry  called  De  Be  Poetica,  an  important 
document  to  determine  the  standing  of  critics  of  that  period  and 
the  ideas  of  an  author  apparently  held  by  the  reading  public. 
Spenser  fares  excellently.  The  eulogies  of  Edward  Phillips, 
Camden,  and  Fuller  are  quoted  together  with  the  high  praise, 
with  its  rational  qualifications,  of  Temple,  Bymer,  and  Dryden 
{Essay  on  Satire). 

In  these  days  English  poetry  was  at  its  lowest  ebb  and  Spen- 
ser's  influence  at  its  faintest  was  coincident  with  this  drab  age. 
The  fact  that  it  was  an  Age  of  Literary  Anarchy,  that  there 
were  many  conflicting  influences  and  many  hostile  ideals,  was  the 
cause  of  this  degeneration.  It  is  remarkable,  under  the  circum- 
stances, to  find  Spenser  admired  and  followed  by  poets  in  other 
respects  so  inimical  to  one  another.  Neo-classicism  was  neces- 
sary to  save  English  poetry.  But  it  grew  only  very  slowly  and 
painfully.  Neo-classicism,  when  it  did  prevail,  found  inspiration 
in  Spenser  and  reconciled  him,  for  the  most  part,  with  its  ideals. 
It  is  significant,  as  we  have  already  seen,  to  note  how  often  he 
was  named  with  Virgil.  It  is  not  true  that  Spenser  fell  into  dis- 
repute and  so  remained  until  the  romanticists  * '  revived ' '  him. 


7  This  sentence  is  lifted  bodily  from  Thomas  Fuller 's  account  of  Spenser 
in  The  History  of  the  Worthies  of  England  1662. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  127 

V 

THE  NEO-CLASSICAL  DESPOTISM 

All  scholarship  on  eighteenth  century  literature  has  of  late 
been  a  mad  scramble  in  search  of  romanticism.  Since  Professor 
Phelps  and  Professor  Beers  traced  its  growth  in  the  eighteenth 
century  it  has  become  so  fashionable  to  detect  signs  of  revolt, 
even  among  the  most  hard-shelled  neo-classicists,  that  some 
brilliant  critic  of  the  future  may  gain  distinction  by  turning 
the  tables  and  by  proving  that  a  school  of  Pope  actually  existed. 
It  becomes  necessary,  then,  to  attempt  to  describe  romanticism 
at  the  very  outset  of  this  section  of  our  study. 

For  our  purposes  it  is  best  to  enumerate  a  number  of  the 
most  commonly  accepted  types  of  romanticism,  realizing  how 
seldom  they  exist  in  combination,  and  that  they  are  often  utterly 
unlike  one  another,  occasionally  even  irreconcilable.  The  most 
distinctive  feature  of  Coleridge's  romanticism,  in  his  greatest 
poems,  is  the  passion  for  mystery  in  the  most  exalted  sense,  the 
power  of  suggestion,  the  devotion  to  things  that  may  be  real. 
In  Woodsworth,  romanticism  lies  in  the  intimate  relating  of 
man's  soul  and  nature.  The  romanticism  of  Byron  is  intense 
subjectivity  and  the  spirit  of  revolt.  Sometimes  the  roman- 
ticism of  Keats,  a  luxurious  heaping  up  of  exquisite  details,  is 
the  exact  opposite.  It  may  be  the  passion  for  things  as  they  are. 
The  delight  in  the  bee  and  the  flower  brings  no  yearning  for 
things  as  they  should  be.  Often,  however,  Keats  is  the  idealist 
with  a  spirit  of  intense  longing.  Again,  in  a  few  lines  in  the  Ode 
to  the  Nightingale,  in  La  Belle  Dame  Sans  Merci,  in  The  Eve  of 
St.  Mark,  Keats  is  with  Coleridge.  In  Shelley  it  is,  more  broadly, 
the  spirit  of  revolt;  at  its  best,  a  peculiarly  refined  and  intense 
spirit  of  aspiration  and  of  intellectual  adventure.  In  Scott  it  is 
a  passion  for  the  grandeur  of  the  past  which,  however,  by  no 
means   implies   a   dissatisfaction   with   the   present.     Professor 


128  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

Phelps  finds  the  most  notable  characteristics  of  romanticism  to 
be:  *' Subjectivity,  Love  of  the  Picturesque,  and  a  Reactionary 
Spirit."  Theodore  Watts-Dunton 's  phrase,  ''The  Renaissance 
of  Wonder,"  is  worth  a  book  on  romanticism.  These  assertions, 
while  they  do  not  absolutely  define  romanticism,  are  sufficiently 
inclusive  of  those  qualities  generally  urged  in  defence  of  all 
newly  discovered  eighteenth  century  romanticists  so  that  we  may 
use  them  as  touchstones. 

It  is  certainly  true  that  the  great  poets,  if  not  all  poets,  are 
both  romantic  and  classical.  But  one  temper  generally  predom- 
inates. It  will  take  a  hardy  investigator  to  find  much  roman- 
ticism in  the  first  few  decades  of  the  eighteenth  century.  For  my 
part,  beginning  as  romanticism-hunter,  I  have  gradually  parted 
with  my  hopes.  The  amount  of  neo-classical  survival  even  among 
the  poets  of  the  first  third  of  the  nineteenth  century,  is  much 
more  striking  than  the  amount  of  significant  romantic  material 
even  in  the  last  half  of  the  eighteenth.  The  classicism  of  Byron 
is  much  more  remarkable  than  the  romanticism  of  Gray  and 
Collins.  The  Neo-classical  Despotism,  once  fully  established, 
was  profound  and  lasting. 

In  the  search  for  neo-classical  beginnings,  in  the  last  infirmity 
of  noble  scholars,  the  desire  to  find  signs  of  a  new  movement 
farther  back  than  any  investigator  has  hitherto  indicated,  we 
exaggerate  the  relations  of  Ben  Jonson,  Waller,  Denham,  even 
Dryden,  to  this  Neo-classical  Despotism.  I  have  already  tried  to 
make  it  clear  that  the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  century 
was  not  an  Augustan  Age,  as  the  text-books  would  have  it,  but 
an  Age  of  Literary  Anarchy,  that  neo-classicism  gained  head- 
way only  with  desperate  slowness.  The  Neo-classical  Despotism 
may  be  said  (for  convenience  only,  for  exact  dates  are  impossible), 
to  have  struggled  into  supremacy  by  1709,  the  date  of  the  appear- 
ance of  the  Pastorals  of  Pope  and  Ambrose  Philips,  of  Prior's 
first  poems,  of  the  opening  numbers  of  the  Tatler,  of  the  writing 
of  Pope 's  dictatorial  Essay  on  Criticism. 

There  is  a  wholesome  lesson  in  a  study  of  the  development, 
for  better  or  worse,  of  Spenser-criticism  in  the  hands  of  the 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  129 

classicists  and  romanticists.  It  shows  the  inability  of  one  age  ^ 
to  appreciate  all  the  merits  of  a  supreme  poet  at  one  time.  Be- 
cause of  ephemeral  whims  men  term  one  aspect  bad  which  the 
next  age  will  admire.  The  neo-classicist  appreciated  sides  of 
Spenser  to  which  the  romanticists  became  stone-blind.  The 
romanticists  revealed  beauties  in  Spenser  that  had  been  tarnished 
by  the  disregard  of  a  century  and  some  beauties,  perhaps,  that 
had  never  before  been  discerned. 

Two  fallacious  ideas  about  the  neo-classical  attitude  toward 
Spenser  are  current ;  that  he  was  unpopular  even  among  literary 
men,  and  that  the  Augustans  approached  him  in  a  spirit  of 
mockery.  Professor  Phelps,  for  instance,  quotes  some  platitudes 
in  Addison's  boyish  Epistle  to  Sacheverel  to  indicate  how  little 
Addison  knew  or  cared  about  Spenser.  But  he  does  not  take 
into  consideration  a  long  series  of  admiring  references  in  Addi- 
son's mature  work,  including  a  prose  allegory  professedly  in 
the  manner  of  Spenser  which  Addison  once  aspired  to  develop 
in  poetic  form.  Similarly  Professor  Phelps  makes  too  much  of 
the  Spenserian  burlesque.  The  Alley,  which  Pope  and  Gay  wrote 
in  a  few  moments  of  triviality.  If  we  examined  consistently  all 
the  vulgar  parodies  in  eighteenth  century  poetry  and  made  the 
same  deductions,  we  should  be  forced  to  conclude  that  the  eigh- 
teenth century  admired  nobody,  ancient  or  modern.  Eighteenth 
century  England  devoted  occasional  moments  of  recreation  to 
that  peculiarly  pointless  type  of  obscenity  that  is  now  current 
among  boys  at  grammar  schools.    It  is  of  little  significance. 

The  essential  truth  is  that  the  neo-classicists  had  a  genuine 
admiration  for  Spenser,  and  that  they  appreciated  a  great  aspect 
of  his  genius  now  misunderstood  through  the  influence  of  literary 
epicures,  from  Leigh  Hunt  down  to  our  "Art  for  Art's  Sake" 
men  who  know  not  what  they  do.  The  Augustans  appreciated 
Spenser 's  moral  earnestness  and  his  allegory.  Nowadays  we  have 
a  morbid  fear  of  didacticism.  We  consider  it  all  bad.  The 
Augustans  considered  it  all  good.  The  golden  mean  is  to  know 
the  difference  between  crude  didacticism — almost  any  sermon, 
the  Essay  on  Man — and  artistic  didacticism — the  last  lines  of  the 
Ode  to  a  Grecian  Urn,  the  first  lines  of  Tennyson's  Ulysses. 


130  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

The  Augustans  also  knew  and  often  named  many  of  Spenser's 
qualities  which  we  admire  today,  his  sweetness,  his  peculiar  kind 
of  naive  simplicity,  his  tenderness,  his  copious  fancy. 

They  wrote  so-called  Spenserian  ' '  Imitations, ' '  not  as  a  mere 
literary  exercise  but  because  one  of  their  fundamental  ideals 
was  to  imitate.  And  the  Augustan  imitations  of  Spenser  are  no 
more  unlike  the  model  than  their  Virgilian  imitations  are  unlike 
their  idol,  Virgil. 

It  is  well  to  begin  an  account  of  the  attitude  of  the  Augustan 
critics  towards  Spenser  with  an  investigation  of  the  ideas  of  the 
two  dictators,  Addison  and  Pope.  In  1694  Addison's  Epistle  to 
Sacheverel,  a  very  youthful  account  of  the  greatest  English  poets, 
appeared.  It  is  simply  a  succession  of  boyish  platitudes  in 
decorous  couplets  and  is  insignificant  from  every  point  of  view. 
Whatever  he  may  have  known  or  thought  about  Spenser  at  first, 
Addison  became,  in  his  mature  years,  a  deep  admirer  of  The 
Faerie  Queene.  A  comment  in  the  Spectator  (No.  62)  where  he 
made  famous  classification  of  the  kinds  of  "Wit,"  is  extremely 
significant  because  it  is  at  once  thoroughly  Augustan  and  in 
praise  of  Spenser.  Whatever  romantic  tendencies  Addison  may 
have  felt,  he  here  admires  Spenser  because  Spenser,  if  you  please, 
is  at  one  with  all  true  believers.    He  is  with  Monsieur  Boileau. 

"As  true  Wit  consists  in  the  Eesemblance  of  Ideas,  and  false  "Wit  in 
the  Eesemblance  of  Words,  according  to  the  foregoing  Instances;  there 
is  another  kind  of  Wit  which  consists  partly  in  the  Eesemblance  of 
Ideas,  and  partly  in  the  Eesemblance  of  Words;  which  for  Distinction 
Sake  I  shall  call  mixt  Wit.  This  Kind  of  Wit  is  that  which  abounds  in 
Cowley  more  than  in  any  Author  that  ever  wrote.  Mr.  Waller  has  like- 
wise a  great  deal  of  it.  Mr.  Dryden  is  very  sparing  in  it.  Milton  had 
a  Genius  much  above  it.  Spencer  is  in  the  same  class  with  Milton.  The 
Italians,  even  in  their  Epic  Poetry  are  full  of  it.  Monsieur  Boileau,  who 
formed  himself  upon  the  Ancient  Poets,  has  everywhere  rejected  it  with 
Scorn.'' 

For  US  the  significant  points  to  notice  are :  the  neo-classical  mania 
for  mechanical  definition  and  classification,  the  surprising  attack 
on  the  immortal  Mr.  Waller,  the  usual  Augustan  onslaught  on  the 
Italian  poets,  the  fact  that  Spenser  and  Milton  are  classed  with 
the  divine  Monsieur  Boileau  and  the  venerable  Ancients,  even 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  131 

above  Dry  den.  Plainly  the  Augustan  had  no  need  to  think 
meanly  of  Spenser  here.  It  must  be  added,  however,  that  Spen- 
ser, from  another  point  of  view,  was  once  grouped  by  his  urbane 
critic  with  the  censured  Italians.  In  the  Spectator,  Number  297, 
he  wrote : 

"Milton  has  interwoven  in  the  Texture  of  his  Fable  some  particulars 
which  do  not  seem  to  have  Probability  enough  for  an  Epic  Poem,  particu- 
larly in  the  Actions  which  he  ascribes  to  Sin  and  Death.  .  .  .  Such  alle- 
gories rather  savour  of  the  Spirit  of  Spencer  and  Ariosto,  than  of  Homer 
and  Vergil." 

But  our  critic  seems  to  have  recanted.  For  in  a  subsequent  num- 
ber (419),  Addison  wrote  of  what  Dryden  called  ''The  Fairy 
Way  of  Writing"  in  a  tone  that  has  been  called  romantic,  and 
lauded  these  ''allegories." 

''There  is  another  sort  of  imaginary  Beings,  that  we  sometimes  meet 
with  among  the  Poets,  when  the  Author  represents  any  Passion,  Appetite, 
Virtue  or  Vice,  under  a  visible  Shape  and  makes  it  a  Person  or  an  Actor 
in  his  Poem.  .  .  .  We  find  a  whole  Creation  of  the  like  shadowy  Persons 
in  Spencer,  who  had  an  admirable  talent  in  Eepresentations  of  this  kind. ' ' 

However  romantic  the  general  tenets  of  this  paper  may  be  con- 
sidered, the  comments  on  Spenser  are  but  that  praise  of  allegory 
which  was  becoming  orthodox  among  the  Augustans.  We  may 
assume  that,  at  this  latter  date,  Addison  would  have  been  less 
ready  to  have  his  fling  at  Milton's  Sin  and  Death,  at  Spenser  and 
the  Italians.  Indeed  the  neo-classical  admiration  for  the  allegory 
of  The  Faerie  Queene,  though  native  to  the  didactic  temperament 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  doubtless  received  some  stimulus  from 
the  words  of  the  revered  Addison.    He  asserts  that : 

''Allegories,  when  well  chosen,  are  like  so  many  Tracks  of  Light  in  / 

a  discourse,  that  makes  everything  about  them  clear  and  beautiful,  "i  V 

Identifying  "Fables,"  for  the  moment,  with  allegory  he  writes 
approvingly : 

"Spencer's  Fairy  Queen  is  one  continued  Series  of  them  from  the 
Beginning  to  the  end  of  that  admirable  Work.  "2 

He  regrets  the  little  cultivation  of  allegory  and,  in  the  Guardian 
for  September  4,  1713,  leaves  us  his  most  interesting  tribute  to 
Spenser : 


1  Spectator,  421. 

2  Spectator,  183. 


132  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

"Though  this  kind  of  composition  was  practised  by  the  finest  authors 
among  the  ancients,  our  country-man,  Spenser,  is  the  last  writer  of  note 
who  has  applied  himself  to  it  with  success. 

I  was  once  thinking  to  have  written  a  whole  canto  in  the  spirit  of 
Spenser,  and  in  order  to  do  it,  contrived  a  fable  of  imaginary  persons 
and  characters.  I  raised  it  on  that  common  dispute  between  the  com- 
parative perfections  and  preeminence  between  the  two  sexes. 

Since  I  have  not  time  to  accomplish  this  work,  I  shall  present  my 
reader  with  the  naked  fable,  reserving  the  embellishments  of  verse  and 
poetry  to  another  opportunity." 

The  "fable"  is  then  transcribed.^  It  is  apparent  that  Spenser 
was  not  only  favored  by  Addison  the  critic,  but  was  no  small 
force  in  the  making  of  those  graceful  and  attractive  allegories 
which  were  widely  imitated  by  the  host  of  urbane  essayists  in  the 
eighteenth  century  who  took  Addison  for  their  model. 

Pope's  admiration  for  Spenser  is  emphatically  expressed  in 
his  words  to  Hughes  (1715).*    He  wrote: 

"Spenser  has  been  ever  a  favorite  poet  to  me;  he  is  like  a  mistress, 
whose  faults  we  see,  but  love  her  with  them  all." 

But  Pope  left  little  detailed  criticism.  His  only  elaborate  com- 
ments are  to  be  found  in  the  Discourse  on  Pastoral  Poetry  which 
he  prefixed  to  the  1717  edition  of  his  Pastorals.  This  is  partially 
borrowed  from  Dryden's  preface  to  his  translation  of  Virgil's 
eclogues  but  contains  the  fullest  and  best  consideration  of  The 
Shepheards  Calender  that  had  yet  appeared.  The  tendency  to 
reconcile  Spenser  with  the  ' '  Ancients ' '  in  true  Augustan  fashion 
is  again  apparent. 

"Among  the  moderns,  their  success  has  been  greatest  who  have  most 
endeavoured  to  make  these  ancients  [viz  Theocritus  and  Virgil]  their 
pattern.  The  most  considerable  genius  appears  in  the  famous  Tasso  and 
our  Spenser.  .  .  .  Spenser 's  Calendar,  in  Mr.  Dryden  's  opinion,  is  the  most 
complete  work  of  this  kind  which  any  nation  has  produced  ever  since 
the  time  of  Vergil." 


3  Samuel  Wesley's  Poems  on  Several  Occasions  (second  edition,  1763) 
contains  a  versification  of  The  Battle  of  the  Sexes  in  Prior-Spenserian 
stanzas. 

4  Quoted  by  Phelps,  The  Beginnings  of  the  English  Eomatitic  Movement, 
Boston,  1893,  p.  53. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  133 

He    critcises    Spenser    justly    for   his    imitation    of   Mantuan's 

satirical  eclogues  and  crassly  for  one  of  his  chief  merits,  the 

introduction  of  varied  stanza-forms  in  the  poem.    Spenser  should 

have  used  the  everlasting  couplet,   of  course.     Pope  criticises 

Spenser  for  imitating  the  Doric  of  Theocritus  by  the  use  of  * '  old 

English  and  country  phrases."     In  this  he  may  have  followed 

Dryden  who,  as  we  have  seen,  once  condemned  and  once  praised. 

Yet  Pope  writes  with  discernment  when  he  adds : 

'^As  there  is  a  difference  betwixt  simplicity  and  rusticity,  so  the 
expression  of  simple  thoughts  should  be  plain,  but  not  clownish. ' ' 

He  is  the  first  to  give  Spenser  credit  for  inventing  the  device  of 

a  "calendar:" 

'  *  The  addition  he  has  made  of  a  calendar  to  his  eclogues  is  very  beau- 
tiful; since  by  this,  besides  the  general  moral  of  innocence  and  sim- 
plicity, which  is  common  to  other  authors  of  Pastoral,  he  has  one  peculiar 
to  himself;  he  compares  human  life  to  the  several  seasons,  and  at  once 
exposes  to  his  readers  a  view  of  the  great  and  little  worlds,  in  their 
various  changes  and  aspects." 

Yet  Pope,  whose  name  is  almost  always  connected  with  decorous 
lawns,  was  the  first  to  point  out  that  Spenser's  nature  descrip- 
tions are  not  always  appropriate  to  the  month,  that : 

"Some  of  his  eclogues  (as  the  sixth,  eighth,  and  tenth  for  example) 
have  nothing  but  their  titles  to  distinguish  them." 

Beginning  with  Dryden 's  criticism,  then.  Pope  developed  the 
first  detailed  study  of  the  Shepheards  Calender.  His  contribu- 
tions are  brilliant  when  we  examine  all  that  was  written  before. 
Never  had  the  Shepheards  Calender  been  at  once  admired  and 
judged  so  discerningly.  It  is  evident  that  the  obscene  Spen- 
serian stanzas,  The  Alley  (the  product  of  a  trivial  hour  with 
Gay)  can  be  relegated  to  their  deserved  insignificance. 

We  have  seen  that  the  two  chiefs  of  the  Augustans  of  the 
early  eighteenth  century  were  not  only  warm  admirers  of  Spen- 
ser but  that  they  made  distinct  contributions  to  the  development 
of  Spenserian  criticism.  It  is  w^orth  emphasizing  that  they  did 
this  by  no  foreshadowing  of  doctrines  that  may  by  any  means 
be  called  romantic.  They  weighed  him  in  the  neo-classical  bal- 
ance and  found  him  wanting  in  few  respects. 


134  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

Pope  was  not  the  only  Augustan  who  was  stimulated  by  The 

Shepheards  Calender.    Mr.  Phelps  writes  misleadingly : 

"Some  interest  in  Spenser  on  tlie  Pastoral  side  was  aroused  by 
Ambrose  Philips  (1671-1749),  who  was  mainly  inspired  by  Spenser  in 
writing  his  Pastorals  (1709).*' 

This  is  to  suggest  that  there  was  a  mere  shadow  of  interest  in 
the  Spenserian  pastoralist  at  this  time.  Since  there  was  a  good 
deal  of  interest,  since  the  pastoral  of  this  period  is  never  noticed 
by  the  literary  historians,  and  since  it  involves  some  important 
truths  in  connection  with  the  Augustan  attitude  toward  Spenser, 
I  must  examine  a  few  of  the  more  important  figures  with  some 
detail. 

The  formal  eclogue  which,  by  the  close  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  contained,  for  the  most  part,  the  dregs  of  poetry,  is 
nevertheless  of  very  considerable  importance  for  the  student  of 
Augustan  poetry.  It  was,  in  general,  a  decadent  form  with  the 
neo-classicists.  Elsewhere  I  have  shown  how  the  Elizabethan 
pastoral,  which  became  sprightly  and  lyrical  and  full  of  careless 
charm  soon  after  Spenser,  through  the  influence  of  innovations 
which  he  suggested  when  he  naturalized  the  form  in  England, 
sank  rapidly  into  hopeless  insipidity  as  the  classical  influences 
came  to  mingle  more  freely  with  that  of  Spenser.^  The  Virgilian 
bucolic  song  was  always  sickly  on  English  soil. 

Decay  and  oblivion  would  seem  inevitable  for  such  anaemic 
verse.  Yet  the  Augustan  pastoral  attained  an  immense  vogue 
which  lasted  even  into  the  early  nineteenth  century.  In  the  skill- 
ful hands  of  Ambrose  Philips,  Pope,  and  Gay  it  became  one  of 
the  minor  forces  which  established  the  Neo-classical  Despotism. 
In  another  path  rough  burlesque,  combined  with  a  genuine  relish 
for  the  homely,  led  up  to  Allan  Aamsay's  blithe,  fresh  Gentle 
Shepherd  and  to  the  spirited  notes  of  Burns ;  it  had  its  share  in 
stimulating  an  interest  in  nature  not  to  be  found  in  books.  The 
immense  vogue  of  the  pastoral  may  have  given  it  some  share  in 


B  I  have  discussed  this  in  * '  The  Golden  Age  of  the  Spenserian  Pas- 
toral, ' '  Publications  of  the  Modern  Language  Association  of  America,  June, 
1910. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  135 

the  rise  of  the  Gothic-romanticism,  that  jaded  passion  for  some- 
thing merely  new  and  strange  which  gradually  became  exalted 
into  the  fine  spirit  of  revolt  against  what  Watts-Dunton  calls 
the  Age  of  Acceptance.  The  titles  of  Colin 's  Oriental  Eclogues^ 
Chatterton's  Arabian  Eclogues,  if  not  their  content,  show  a 
vague  desire  to  pass  beyond  "Nature''  as  Boileau  conceived  it, 
beyond  the  town,  beyond  pseudo-imitations  of  the  ancients,  be- 
yond the  decorous  lawns  of  an  English  manor.  The  craze  for 
this  romantic  pose  which  became  romanticism  may  be  indicated 
by  one  title:  '' Exaltation,  An  Eclogue;  Translated  from  the 
Original  Babylonian.*'^ 

In  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  influence  of 
Spenser  over  the  formal  eclogue  was  remote  but  pervasive.  In 
1709  Ambrose  Philips  published  his  Pastorals  in  the  Sixth  Part 
of  Tonson's  Poetical  Miscellanies.  Philips,  in  his  preface,  com- 
plains unaccountably  at  the  neglect  of  pastoral  poetry.  Per- 
haps, however,  he  was  only  hitting  at  its  insipidity : 

*'It  is  somewhat  strange  to  conceive,  in  an  age  so  addicted  to  the 
Muses,  how  pastoral  poetry  comes  to  be  never  so  much  as  thought  upon; 
considering,  especially,  that  it  is  of  the  greatest  antiquity,  and  hath 
ever  been  accounted  the  foremost,  among  the  smaller  poems  in  dignity. '* 
Philips  is  explicit  in  the  choice  of  masters : 

'^Virgil  and  Spenser  made  use  of  it  as  a  prelude  to  epic  poetry:  But, 
I  fear,  the  innocency  of  the  subject  makes  it  so  little  inviting.  .  .  . 
Theocritus,  Virgil,  and  Spenser,  are  the  only  poets  who  seem  to  have  hit 
upon  the  true  nature  of  pastoral  compositions;  so  that  it  will  be  suflficient 
praise  for  me,  if  I  have  not  altogether  failed  in  my  attempt." 

In  the  first  eclogue,  Lobbin  (a  character  in  Spenser's  Novem- 
ber), like  Colin  Clout  in  Januarie  and  December,  complains  of 
his  unrequited  love : 

'*  Lobbin,    a    shepherd-boy,    one    evening    fair. 


Thus  plained  him  of  his  dreary  discontent 

Whilom7  did  I,  all  as  this  poplar  fair. 
Upraise  my  heedless  head  then  void  of  care. '^ 


7  The  Spenserian  veneer  will  be  apparent  to  all  students  of  the  Shep- 
heards  Calender  in  such  phrases  as  "whilom"  and  "all  as"  and  many 
more. 

6  This  poem  is  printed  in  an  anthology  called  The  Poetry  of  the  World, 
London,  1791,  vol.  3,  p.  274. 


136  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

But  now  Colin  is  the  victim  of  the  heedless  Lucy.     Readers  of 

Spenser  will  recognize  at  once  that  Philips  colors  his  Augustan 

couplets  with  a  slight  infusion  of  Spenserian  diction. 

"The  jolly  grooms  I  fly,  and  all  alone, 
To  rocks  and  woods  pour  forth  my  fruitless  moan. 
The  gifts,  alike,  and  giver  she  disdains 
And  now,  left  heiress  of  the  glens  she'll  deem 
Me,  landless  lad,  unworthy  her  esteem. ' ' 

Lobbin  sings,  with  some  real  charm,  of  his  devotion  if  Lucy  would 

listen. 

* '  How  would  I  wander,  every  day,  to  find 
The  choice  of  wildings,  blushing  through  the  rind! 
For  glossy  plums  how  lightsome  climb  the  tree, 
How  risk  the  vengeance  of  the  thrifty  bee ! ' ' 

In  the  second  Pastoral,  ''Thenot  and  Colinet,"  Colinet^  com- 
plains to  Thenot,  who  is  an  aged  shepherd  as  in  Spenser's 
Fehruarie,  that  he  had  left  his  native  land  for  greater  gain  but 
had  become  poor  and  ill. 

"My  sheep  quite  spent  through  travel  and  ill-fare 
And,  like  their  keeper,  ragged  grown  and  bare. 
The  damp  cold  greensward  for  my  nightly  bed, 
And  some  slant  willow 's  trunk  to  rest  my  head. ' ' 

For  this  motive  Philips  could  find  inspiration  in  Virgil,  Man- 
tuan,  and  Spenser's  September.  Eclogue  three,  ''Albino,"  con- 
tains a  resolution  to  write  pastorals  because  they  were  cultivated 
by  Virgil  and  Spenser. 

"And  Spenser,  when  amid  the  rural  throng 
He   carol 'd   sweet   and   graz'd   along   the   flood 
Of  gentle  Thames,  made  every  sounding  wood 
With  good  Eliza 's  name  to  ring  around. '  'lo 

Angelot  and  Palin  sing  an  elegy  for  Albino.  Angelot  laments, 
but  Palin  sings  of  hope  in  the  vein  popularized  for  English  pas- 
toral elegy  by  Spenser  in  his  lament  for  Dido.  The  old  Spen- 
serian fashion  of  flower-passages  is  revived. 


8  Spenser  describes  his  Eosalind  as  '  *  the  widow 's  daughter  of  the  glen. '  * 

9  A  diminutive  for  Colin  once  used  by  Spenser  himself  {December y  1.  18, 
"careful  Colinet.") 

10  Spenser  sang  to  Eliza  and  Thames  in  April.    Perhaps  Philips  remem- 
bered also  the  Epithalamion: 

"The  woods  shall  to  me  answer  and  my  Eccho  ring." 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  137 

"O  now,  if  ever,  bring 
The  laurell   green,   the   smelling   eglantine, 
And  tender  branches  from  the  mantling  vine, 
The  dewy  cowslip  which  in  meadow  grows, 
The  fountain  violet  and  the  garden  rose. 
Marsh-lilies  sweet  and  tufts  of  daffodil. '^n 

The  fourth  eclogue,  "Myco  and  Argol,"  opens  with  a  pretty- 
picture  which  shows  a  genuine  interest  in  nature,  however  frag- 
mentary Philips '  real  knowledge  of  rural  scenery  may  have  been. 

**This  place  may  seem  for  shepherd's  leisure  made. 
So  close  these  elms  inweave  their  lofty  shade; 
The  twining  woodbine,  how  it  climbs  to  breathe 
Eefreshing  sweets  around  on  all  beneath: 
The  ground  with  grass  of  cheerful  green  bespread. 
Through  which  the  springing  flower  up-rears  the  head; 
Medley 'd  with  daisies  white  and  endive  blue, 
And  honeysuckles  of  a  purple  dye, 
Confusion  gay  bright  waving  to  the  eye. ' ' 

Myco  sings  to  Argol  the  elegy  on  Stella  which  Colinet  taught 
him.    In  the  fifth  Pastoral,  ' '  Cuddy, ' '  many  shepherds  sing. 

"Then  Cuddy  last  (who  Cuddy  can  excel 
In  neat  device?)  his  tale  began  to  tell. "12 

Cuddy's  pipes  are  outsung  by  the  nightingale.  He  takes  a  harp 
and  wins.  The  nightingale  falls  dead,  Cuddy  bewails  her,  and 
breaks  the  cruel  strings.  The  sixth  Pastoral  is  one  of  the  con- 
ventional singing  contest. 

Philips  had  some  real  love  for  nature,  though  little  apparent 
knowledge  at  first  hand.  He  was  a  master  of  smooth  verse.  The 
influence  of  Spenser  upon  him  is  very  marked.  Like  most  Augus- 
tans,  he  fused  the  Spenserian  vein  with  the  spirit  of  neo-classi- 


11  Compare  the  famous  flower  set-piece  in  Spenser 's  Song  to  Elisa  in 
April,  and  its  many  imitations,  some  of  which  are  cited  in  The  Golden  Age 
of  the  Spenserian  Pastoral  referred  to  above.  In  this  eclogue  occur  two 
other  of  Spenser's  shepherd-names,  Cuddy  and  Hobbinol. 

12  The  regular  Spenserian  trick  much  cultivated  by  Spenser  and  his  fol- 
lowers.    Compare : 

"A  shepeheards  boye  (no  better  doe  him  call)." — Januarie. 
"Poore  Colin  Clout  (who  knows  not  Colin  Clout?)." — Faerie  Queene,  6, 
10, 16,  etc.,  etc. 


138  University  of  California  Fublications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

cism.  The  general  qualities  of  Philips 's  style  may  be  best  seen 
in  his  version  of  Strada's  famous  "Nightingale,"  already  men- 
tioned, in  ' '  Cuddy. ' '  Strada  's  poem  was  very  popular.  It  had 
been  translated  with  rare  fineness  by  John  Ford.  Crashaw's 
unpruned  and  exquisite  fancy  had  twined  it  in  a  maze  of  true- 
lover 's-knots.  It  is  instructive  to  compare  with  these  the  liquid 
passionless  cadences  of  Philips,  a  clear  brook  which  has  flowed 
out  of  its  wonderful  forest  haunts  to  a  flat  land  adorned  with 
trim  paterres. 

The  same  volume  of  Tonson's  Miscellanies  (1709)  contained 
the  Pastorals  of  Alexander  Pope,  whose  preface,  written  later, 
with  its  interesting  praise  and  censure  of  the  Shepheards  Calen- 
der, has  already  been  treated.  His  admiration  for  Spenser's 
Calendar-idea  induced  Pope  to  name  each  of  his  four  eclogues 
after  a  season.  Spenser's  failure  to  make  month,  mood,  and 
nature  correspond,  Pope  attributed,  with  true  Augustan  ignor- 
ance, to  the  fact  that : 

* '  The  year  has  not  enough  variety  in  it  to  furnish  every  month  with 
a  particular  description,  as  it  may  every  season. ' ' 

Pope  claims  for  his  Pastorals : 

''That  they  have  as  much  variety  of  description,  in  respect  to  the 
several  seasons,  as  Spenser's,  that,  in  order  to  add  to  this  variety,  the 
several  times  of  the  day  are  observed,  the  rural  employments  in  each 
season  or  time  of  day,  and  the  rural  scenes  or  places  proper  to  such 
employments,  not  without  some  regard  to  the  several  ages  of  man,  and  the 
different  passions  proper  to  each  age. 

**But  after  all,  if  they  have  any  merit,  it  is  to  be  attributed  to  some 
good  old  authors,  whose  works,  as  I  had  leisure  to  study,  so,  I  hope,  I 
have  not  wanted  care  to  imitate." 

The  world  has  long  laughed  and  sneered  at  Pope's  jealousy 
which  led  him  to  encourage  the  mad  wag  John  Gay  to  pillory 
' '  namby-pamby  Philips ' '  with  coarse  pastoral  banter.  As  a  result 
the  remarkable  Shepherd's  Week  appeared  in  1714.  Steele,  as 
we  shall  see,  had  placed  Philips  in  a  flattering  genealogy  of 
bucolic  poets  as  descendant  of  Theocritus,  Virgil,  and  Spenser. 
Pope  had  vented  his  spleen  in  a  masterpiece  of  irony  which  he 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  139 

had  deluded  the  good-natured  Addison  into  printing.  Now, 
being  unable  to  take  issue  with  the  cudgel  which  the  stalwart 
*' namby-pamby  Philips"  had  hung  up  in  a  tavern  for  future 
argument,  he  was  glad  to  crouch  behind  Gay's  wit.  But  Gay 
proved  to  be  something  more  than  a  mere  rhymster-mercenary. 
In  his  burlesque  he  took  pride  in  treading  the  ''plain  highway 
of  Pastoral"  in  opposition  to  the  ''rout  and  rabblement  of 
critical  gallimawfry"  that  was  "made  of  late  days  by  certain 
young  men  of  insipid  delicacy  concerning,  I  wist  not  what,  golden 
age,  and  other  outrageous  conceits,  to  which  they  would  confine 
the  Pastoral."  Gay's  introductory  words  throughout  show  the 
strong  influence  of  E.  K.'s  preface  and  glosses  of  The  Shep- 
heards  Calender.  That  he  got  much  stimulus  from  the  more  un- 
couth aspects  of  some  of  Spenser 's  eclogues  may  well  be  believed. 
His  comments  on  Spenser  and  avowals  of  indebtedness  may  be 
taken  with  a  degree  of  seriousness. 

"For  as  much  as  I  have  mentioned  maister  Spenser,  soothly  I  must 
acknowledge  him  a  bard  of  sweetest  memorial.  Yet  hath  his  shepherd's 
boy  at  some  times  raised  his  rustic  reed  to  rhimes  more  rumbling  than 
rural.  Diverse  grave  points  also  hath  he  handled  of  churchly  matter  and 
doubts  in  religion  daily  arising,  to  great  clerks  only  appertaining.  What 
liketh  me  best  are  his  names,  indeed  right  simple  and  meet  for  the 
country,  such  as  Lobbin,  Cuddy,  Hobbinol,  Diggon,  and  others,  some  of 
which  I  have  made  bold  to  borrow.  Moreover,  as  he  called  his  eclogues, 
the  shepherd's  calendar,  and  divided  the  same  into  twelve  months,  I 
have  chosen  (peradventure  not  over-rashly)  to  name  mine  by  the  days 
of  the  week." 

There  is  enough  of  the  picturesque  in  Spenser's  eclogues  to  have 
given  Gay  much  inspiration.  Doubtless  the  memory  of  the  good 
rustic  words  in  The  Shepheards  Calender  which  Gay  used  occas- 
ionally gave  him  the  main  suggestion  for  doing  something  more 
than  merely  mocking  Philips  and  stimulated  him  to  write  with 
some  real  interest  of  shepherdesses  not  "idly  piping  on  oaten 
reeds,  but  milking  the  kine,  tying  up  the  sheaves,  or  if  the  hogs 
are  astray  driving  them  to  their  styes."  He  rose  above  mere 
burlesque  when  he  wrote : 


140  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

"Now  he  goes  on,  and  sings  of  fairs  and  shows, 
For  still  new  fairs  before  his  eyes  arose. 
How  pedlar's  stalls  with  glitt'ring  toys  are  laid. 
The  various  fairings  of  the  country  maid. 
Long  silken  laces  hang  upon  the  twine. 
And  rows  of  pins  and  amber  bracelets  shine; 
How  the  tight  lass,  knives,   combs,  and  scissors   spies. 
And  looks  on  thimbles  with  desiring  eyes. 
Of  lotteries  next  with  tuneful  note  he  told, 
Where  silver  spoons  are  won,  and  rings  of  gold. 
The  lads  and  lasses  trudge  the  street  along, 
And  all  the  fair  is  crowded  in  his  song." 

Gay's  merry  notes  cleared  a  path  for  such  true  song  of  the 
country-side  as  Ramsay's  Gentle  Shepherd.  His  satirical  town- 
eclogues,  with  those  of  Swift,  Pope  and  Lady  Mary  Wortly  Mon- 
tague, stimulated  wide-spread  imitation.  But  the  languid,  seri- 
ous pastoral  with  a  Spenserian  tinge  continued. 

Indeed,  in  the  utterances  of  Isaac  Browne  we  find  a  protest 
against  the  irreverent  spirits  which  may,  with  plausibility, 
be  taken  as  typical  of  many  writers  of  the  time.  For  Browne, 
despite  the  choking  dust  and  the  mildew  which  his  valiant  or 
docile  reader  encounters  in  pulling  him  off  the  shelves  of  a 
twentieth  century  library,  was  a  live  figure  in  his  day.  His 
Piscatory  Eclogues  (1729)^^  went  through  a  number  of  editions 
in  answer  to  a  demand  which  seems  to  have  remained  unabated 
to  the  end  of  the  century.  Gay  had  not  ruined  the  artificial  pas- 
torals for  the  Augustans.  They  were  actively  cultivated,  as  I 
have  said,  even  within  the  portals  of  the  nineteenth  century.  And 
in  Browne's  Essay  in  Defence  of  Piscatory  Eclogue  scoffers  like 
Gay  and  Swift  were  scorned. 

"The  Criticks,  an  arbitrary  positive  sort  of  men,  have  taken  upon 
them  to  make  a  much  too  nice  comparison  between  the  success  of 
Heroic  and  Pastoral  Poetry:  for  they  allow  scarcely  more  than  three 
who  are  deservedly  ranked  in  the  class  of  writers  of  either  sort;  not- 
withstanding there  have  been  numerous  performers  in  each  kind,  in 
several  ages;  ....  for  besides  Theocritus,  Virgil  and  Tasso,i*  whom 
they  make  to  have  been  the  only  writers  of  the  true  Pastoral,  our  Spen- 
ser, Fletcher,  and  Milton,  and  I  am  free  to  add  Mr.  Phillips,  Mr.  Con- 
greve  and  many  others  have  a  deserved  praise  for  the  pieces  they  have 
given  us  of  this  kind. 

13  Browne  says  they  were  written  during  the  summer  of  1727. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  141 

"Clownish  and  low  expressions,  quaint  obsolete  phrases,  on  the  one 
hand,  though  they  cover  a  false  and  improper  sentiment;  and  on  the 
other,  laboured  turns  of  wit  and  amorous  extravagancies,  appear  to  be 
mistook  by  some,  for  its  distinguishing  graces." 

The  last  sentence  is  doubtless  a  hit  at  Gay,  whose  enmity  he  defies 

by  his  defence  of  Philips.    Browne  would  have  placed  pastoral 

poetry  in  ''as  high  estimation  as  the  epic."    He  pointed  out  that 

many  good  poets,  Virgil,  Tasso,  Spenser,  succeeded  in  both.    Like 

a  good  Augustan  he  went  to  Rapin  for  definitions. 

**  Pastoral  is  the  imitation  of  the  action  of  a  Shepherd,  or  one  taken 
under  that  character." 

Nature,  contended  Browne,  is  a  wide  field  for  contemplation  and 
beautiful  ideas.  Shepherds,  however,  were  to  be  lovers  as  well 
as  shepherds.  Angling  was  praised.  The  Piscatorie  Eclogues  of 
the  sedulous  Spenserian,  Phineas  Fletcher,  were  mentioned  with 
admiration.  It  is  a  striking  fact  that  Browne,  endowed  with  an 
enthusiastic  angler's  passion  for  real  nature,  believed  in  the 
artificial  pastoral  and  imitated  Spenser  in  the  Augustan  manner. 

It  would  be  painful  and  unprofitable  to  stay  longer  in  these 
arid  fields.  Perhaps  I  have  bullied  the  reader,  with  my  dull 
details,  into  accepting  my  conclusions.  Through  the  early  de- 
cades of  the  eighteenth  century  the  formal  eclogue  was  definitely 
influenced  by  Spenser  and  played  some  part  in  the  development 
of  Augustan  ideals.  When  the  taste  for  ''Oriental"  eclogues 
developed,  Spenserianism  waned  before  this  pastoral  side  of  the 
romantic  pose.  We  must  insist,  with  monotonous  iteration,  that 
Spenser  and  neo-classicism  were  perfectly  reconciled,  that  Spen- 
ser sowed  few  seeds  of  romanticism.  As  for  the  insipid  pastoral 
it  did,  however,  point  vaguely  to  a  revival  of  interest  in  nature 
at  first  hand  through  the  brisk  verses  of  Ramsay,  Ferguson,  and 
the  more  vigorous  in  proportion  as  they  broke  away  from  the 
shadows  of  Spenser  and  Virgil. 

Jolly  quixotic  Dick  Steele,  who  has  been  mentioned  as  the 
unwitting  cause  of  that  most  unpastoral  feud  which  involved 
Pope,  Philips  and  Gay,  had  some  gallant  words  for  Spenser.    It 


14  The  critics  generally  chose  Spenser  rather  than  Tasso,  as  we  have 
seen.     I  have  quoted  Dryden's  explicit  praise  of  Spenser  above  Tasso. 


142  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

is  easy  to  understand  Sir  Richard's  admiration  for  Spenser's 
chivalric  spirit.  On  November  19,  1712,  he  published  a  Spectator 
essay  on  Spenser.  Professor  Phelps,  intent  on  proving  the  indif- 
ference to  Spenser  during  the  first  decades  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, mentions  the  article  under  consideration  but  is  inclined 
to  question  the  sincerity  of  Steele's  appreciation.  But  the  paper 
certainly  shows  some  knowledge  of  The  Faerie  Queene,  Steele 
characteristically  fixes  upon  Britomart,  or  Chastity,  for  special 
admiration.  He  says  justly  that  the  "Legend  of  Friendship"  is 
more  diffuse.  At  least,  then,  he  has  been  reading  the  third  and 
fourth  books  of  The  Faerie  Queejie,  a  pastime  that  our  ravens 
would  have  us  believe  quite  out  of  date  in  our  days  of  hurried  and 
dyspeptic  reading.  He  is  one  of  those  who  praised  Spenser's 
use  of  archaisms. 

''His  old  Words  are  all  true  English  and  Numbers  exquisite;  and 
since  of  Words  there  is  the  Multa  Eenascentur,  since  they  are  all 
proper,  such  a  Poem  should  not  (any  more  than  Milton's)  subsist  all  of 
it  of  common  ordinary  Words." 

Still,  were  this  all,  we  might  share  Mr.  Phelps's  doubt  as  to 
Steele's  sincerity.  "How  far  Steele  was  prompted  to  all  this  by 
real  love  of  Spenser,  or  by  the  necessity  of  writing  his  sheet  is 
hard  to  say, ' '  writes  Mr.  Phelps.  No  doubt  we  might  conjure  up 
pictures  of  our  beloved  knight,  somewhat  muddled  with  port, 
tearing  his  hair  at  blear  dawn  over  a  Spectator  article.  A  clouded 
but  ecstatic  memory  of  Addison  on  Milton  and  lo!  our  hero's 
pen  wags  madly  about  Spenser,  upon  whom  he  has  nothing  to 
write  except  what  wells  from  his  good  nature  unsupported  by 
knowledge.  This  would  make  a  plausible  and  attractive  picture. 
But  there  is  more  evidence,  besides  the  article  quoted,  to  make 
us  believe  that  Steele's  admiration  for  Spenser  was  full  of  his 
wonted  sincerity  and  was  founded  on  knowledge.  In  the  Guar- 
dian for  April  15,  1713,  he  again  praised  Spenser  and  asserted 
that  Spenser  and  Ambrose  Philips,  in  their  pastorals,  "have 
copied  and  improved  the  beauties  of  the  Ancients."  He  fol- 
lowed Dryden  in  asserting  that  the  English  rustic  language 
makes  imitation  of  the  Doric  of  Theocritus  more  possible  than 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  143 

the  language  of  the  Latin  poets.    In  the  Guardian  for  April  17, 

1713,  he  wrote  a  prose  pastoral  in  which  the  great  writers  of 

eclogues  were  treated  allegorically.    Spenser  is  made  the  son  of 

Virgil  and  the  father  of  Philips,    In  1762  Sir  William  Jones,  the 

famous  Orientalist,  versified  Steele's  pastoral  allegory.    We  may 

quote  from  the  description  of  Spenser : 

*'High  in  the  midst  the  plaintive  Colin  rose, 
Born  on  the  lilied  banks  of  royal  Thame, 
Which  oft  had  rung  with  Eosalinda's  name; 

And,  like  the  nymph  who  fir'd  his  youthful  breast. 
Green  were  his  buskins,  green  his  simple  vest. 
With  careless  ease  his  rustick  lays  he  sung. 
And  melody  flow'd  smoothly  from  his  tongue: 
Of  June's  gay  fruits,  and  August's  corn  he  told. 
The  bloom  of  April,  and  December's  cold; 
The  loves  of  Shepherds,  and  their  harmless  cheer 
In  every  month  that  decks  the  varied  year." 

That  Steele  read  Spenser  con  amove  is  further  confirmed  by  a 

very  representative  article  in  the  Tatler  for  July  6,  1710. 

"I  was  this  morning  reading  the  tenth  canto  of  the  fourth  book  of 
Spenser,  in  which  Sir  Scudamour  relates  the  progress  of  his  courtship 
of  Amoret  under  a  very  beautiful  allegory,  which  is  one  of  the  most 
natural  and  unmixed  of  any  in  that  most  excellent  author." 

Steele  appends  a  brief  prose  paraphrase  * '  for  the  benefit  of  many 
English  Lovers,  who  have,  by  frequent  letters  desired  me  to  lay 
down  some  rules  for  the  conduct  of  their  virtuous  Amours.'' 
Spenser  is  adroitly  turned  into  the  graceful  eighteenth  century 
style.  Surely  we  may  conclude  that  Dick  Steele,  devoted  if  not 
always  thoughtful  lover  of  Prue,  could  hardly  have  resisted  the 
fascination  of  Spenser's  court  of  love. 

Another  one  of  the  most  urbane  spirits  of  the  day  and  a  tower 
of  Augustanism,  Mat  Prior,  paid  liberal  homage  to  Spenser.  In 
1706  he  brought  out  An  Ode,  Humbly  Inscribed  to  the  Queen, 
on  the  Glorious  Success  of  Her  Majesty  ^s  Arms.  Written  in  Imi- 
tation of  Spenser's  style.  His  preface  is  a  capital  example  of 
the  ease  which  the  Augustan  found  in  reconciling  Spenser  with 
Augustan  ideals. 

'*As  to  the  style,  the  choice  I  made  of  following  the  ode  in  Latin 
determined  me  in  English  to  the  stanza:   and  herein  it  was  impossible 


144  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

not  to  have  a  mind  to  follow  our  great  countryman  Spenser;  which  I 
have  done  (as  well,  at  least,  as  I  could)  in  the  manner  of  my  expression, 
and  the  turn  of  my  number;  having  only  added  one  verse  to  his  stanza, 
which  I  thought  made  the  number  more  harmonious;  and  avoided  such 
of  his  words  as  I  found  too  obsolete.  I  have,  however,  retained  some 
few  of  them,  to  make  the  colouring  look  more  like  Spenser's.  .  .  . 

"My  two  great  examples,  Horace  and  Spenser,  in  many  things  re- 
semble each  other;  both  have  a  height  of  imagination,  and  a  majesty 
of  expression  in  describing  the  sublime;  and  both  know  to  temper  those 
talents,  and  sweeten  the  description,  so  as  to  make  it  lovely  as  well  as 
pompous;  both  have  equally  that  agreeable  manner  of  mixing  morality 
with  their  story,  and  that  curiosa  felicitas  in  the  choice  of  their  diction, 
which  every  writer  aims  at  and  so  few  have  reached;  both  are  particu- 
larly fine  in  their  images,  and  knowing  in  their  numbers. ' ' 

Mr.  Phelps  quotes  this  passage  as  exhibiting  "that  confusion  of 
ideals  so  often  shown  by  the  Augustans."  He  smiles  at  Prior's 
comparison  of  Spenser  and  Horace.  But  the  comparison  is  per- 
fectly sound.  Here  is  an  Augustan  who  appreciated  the  moral- 
istic side  of  Spenser  which  we  romanticists  are  too  likely  to  neg- 
lect or  despise.  He  respects  Horace,  a  much  better  authority  than 
our  * '  Art  for  Art 's  sake ' '  men,  for  his  association  of  the  poet  and 
seer  of  morality.  Prior's  distortion  of  the  Spenserian  stanza 
was  indeed  an  example  of  Augustan  stupidity.  He  was  influ- 
enced by  the  deadening  cadence  of  the  heroic  couplet.  In  his 
preface  to  Solomon,  however,  Prior  shows  a  restless  dissatisfac- 
tion with  the  couplet,  along  with  an  admiration  of  Spenser  that 
Mr.  Phelps  should  not  have  neglected. 

"In  our  Language  Spenser  has  not  contented  himself  with  this  sub- 
missive Manner  of  Imitation  [i.e.,  the  methods  of  the  French  and  Italian 
imitations  of  the  orthodox  Classical  epics] :  He  launches  out  into  flowery 
Paths,  which  still  seem  to  conduct  him  into  one  great  Road.  His  Fairy 
Queen  (had  it  been  finished)  must  have  ended  in  the  Account,  which  every 
Knight  was  to  give  of  his  Adventures,  and  in  the  accumulated  praises  of 
his  Heroic  Poem,  but  in  another  Cast  and  Figure,  than  any  that  had  ever 
been  written  before.  Yet  it  is  observable,  that  every  Hero  (as  far  as  We 
can  judge  by  the  Books  still  remaining)  bears  his  distinguished  Char- 
acter and  represents  some  particular  Virtue  conducive  to  the  whole 
Design. 

"If  striking  out  into  Blank  Verse  as  Milton  did  (and  in  this  kind 
Mr.  Philipps,  had  he  lived,  would  have  excelled)  or  running  the  thought 
into   Alternate   and   Stanza,   which   allows    greater   Variety   and   still   pre- 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  145 

serves  the  Dignity  of  the  Verse;  as  Spenser  and  Fairfax  have  done;  If 
either  of  these,  I  say,  be  a  proper  Kemedy  for  my  Poetical  Complaint, 
or  if  any  other  may  be  found,  I  dare  not  determine:  I  am  only  enquiring, 
in  order  to  be  better  informed,  without  presuming  to  direct  the  judg- 
ment of  Others. ' ' 

With  all  his  diffidence,  Prior  was  outspoken  in  his  objection  to 
the  couplet.  He  considered  it  "too  confined,"  ''too  broken  and 
weak  for  Epic,"  and  that  it  tires  both  writer  and  reader.  God 
knows  this  is  all  true  enough  of  poor  Prior's  Solomon,  the  ambi- 
tion of  his  life. 

We  may  now  approach  the  Augustan  attitude  toward  Spenser 
through  another  medium,  that  of  the  Spenser-scholar  of  the 
period.  John  Hughes  (1677-1720),  a  contributor  to  The  Spec- 
tator, was  the  greatest  Spenser-scholar  of  the  early  eighteenth 
century.  His  edition  of  Spenser  (1715)  must  still  be  taken  into 
account  by  students  of  The  Faerie  Queene}^  Hughes's  methods 
were  for  the  most  part  thoroughly  Augustan.  He  displays  the 
neo-classical  interest  in  allegory  and  essays  an  elaborate  discus- 
sion of  allegory  as  a  type  of  literature  in  the  same  manner  in 
which  Bossu  had  discussed  the  epic.  A  short  citation  will  show 
how  strongly  Hughes  was  influenced  by  the  French  makers  of 
mechanical  rules  for  the  creation  of  poetry. 

'*  There  is  no  doubt  but  men  of  critical  learning,  if  they  had  thought 
fit,  might  have  given  us  rules  about  Allegorical  writing,  as  they  have 
done  about  Epick,  and  other  kinds  of  poetry;  but  they  have  rather 
chosen  to  let  this  forest  remain  wild,  as  if  they  thought  there  was  some- 
thing in  the  nature  of  the  soil  which  could  not  be  so  well  restrained  and 
cultivated  in  enclosures." 


15  It  may  be  worth  noting  here  that  Mr.  Beers  makes  capital  of  Hughes 's 
glossary  to  indicate  how  little  the  eighteenth  century  knew  of  Spenser.  The 
fact  that  it  contains  explanations  of  such  words  as  ''baleful,"  "aghast," 
''behest,"  "dreary,"  "craven,"  "forlorn,"  "carol,"  "foray,"  "guer- 
don," "plight,"  "welkin,"  "yore," — words  well-known  today  through 
our  poets — argues,  thinks  Mr.  Beers,  for  eighteenth  century  ignorance  of 
Spenser.  Yet,  to  go  no  further,  I  find  in  the  latest  and  best  one-volume 
editions,  the  Globe  and  the  Cambridge,  that  all  these  words,  except 
"dreary,"  "craven,"  and  "yore,"  are  carefully  explained  in  the  glos- 
saries. Furthermore,  eighteenth  century  love  of  learned  lumber,  of  foot- 
less footnotes,  and  the  Uke  is  enough  explanation.  Poems  are  constantly 
adorned  with  notes  explaining  allusions  to  the  commonplaces  of  Greek 
myth.  Why  not  argue  from  this  that  the  Augustans  did  not  know  Homer, 
Virgil,  and  Ovid? 


146  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

Nothing  daunted,  however,  Hughes  formulates  four  rules.   Tried 

by  this  standard  Spenser  is  found  praiseworthy. 

"Spenser's  conduct  [in  respect  to  allegory]  is  much  more  reasonable 
[than  Tasso's].  As  he  designed  his  Poem  upon  the  Plan  of  the  Virtues 
by  which  he  has  entitled  his  several  Books  he  scarce  ever  loses  sight  of 
his  design." 

Since  Hughes's  fourth  rule  is  that  the  allegory  ''must  be  clear 
and  intelligible, ' '  he  censures  Temple  for  his  judgment  that  Spen- 
ser's  "moral  lay  too  bare."  But  we  must  not  come* to  consider 
the  Augustans  as  obsessed  by  their  devotion  to  Spenser  as  an 
allegorist.  They  knew  many  of  his  other  essential  qualities.  In 
his  Remarks  on  the  Faerie  Queene  Hughes  writes : 

"The  chief  merit  of  this  poem  consists  in  that  surprising  vein  of 
fabulous  invention  which  runs  through  it  everywhere  with  imagery  and 
description  more  than  we  meet  with  in  any  modern  poem.  .  .  .  His  abund- 
ance betrays  him  into  excess,  and  his  judgement  is  overborne  by  the 
torrent  of  his  imagination." 

These  phrases  should  be  remembered  because,  whoever  first  used 
them,  they  were  quickly  adopted  by  a  number  of  writers  of  hand- 
books on  poetry  just  as  our  compilers  of  short  histories  of  English 
literature  paraphrase  or  adopt  the  orthodox  statements  of  larger 
works.  Hughes  followed  Dryden  in  his  criticism  of  unity  in  The 
Faerie  Queene  as  a  whole. 

"The  several  Books  appear  rather  like  so  many  several  poems  than 
one  entire  fable :  each  of  them  has  its  peculiar  Knight,  and  is  independent  of 
the  rest;  and  though  some  of  the  persons  make  their  appearance  in  dif- 
ferent Books,  yet  this  has  very  little  effect  in  connecting  them.  Prince 
Arthur  is,  indeed,  the  principal  person  and  has  a  share  given  him  in 
every  legend:  but  his  part  is  not  considerable  enough  in  any  one  of  them; 
he  appears  and  vanishes  again  like  a  spirit;  and  we  lose  sight  of  him  too 
soon  to  consider  him  as  the  hero  of  the  Poem. ' ' 

Thomas  Warton  also  imitated  Dryden  in  his  investigation  of  the 

unity  of  The  Faerie  Queene  and  the  assertions  in  the  preface  to 

the  translation  of  the  Aeneid  became,  with  Warton 's  powerful 

aid,  the  accepted  utterance.    To  our  own  day  critics  have  merely 

, paraphrased  or  agreed  with  Dryden,   whether  they  knew  his 

comments  at  first  hand  or  not. 

We  now  come  to  Hughes's  most  significant  contribution  to 

Spenserian  criticism.     He  argues  that  the  whole  frame  of  The 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  147 

Faerie  Queene  would  appear  monstrous  if  it  were  examined  by 
rules  of  epic  poetry  drawn  from  the  practice  of  Homer  and 
Virgil. 

"But  as  it  is  plain  the  Author  never  designed  it  by  those  rules,  I 
think  it  ought  rather  to  be  considered  as  a  poem  of  a  particular  kind, 
describing,  in  a  series  of  Allegorical  adventures  or  episodes,  the  most 
noted  virtues  and  vices.  To  compare  it  ...  .  with  the  models  of  An- 
tiquity would,  be  like  drawing  a  parallel  between  the  Roman  and  the 
Gothick  architecture.  In  the  first  there  is,  doubtless,  a  more  natural 
grandeur  and  simplicity;  in  the  latter  we  find  great  mixtures  of  beauty 
and  barbarism,  yet  assisted  by  the  invention  of  inferior  ornaments;  and 
though  the  former  is  more  majestick  in  the  whole,  the  latter  may  be 
very  surprising,  and  agreeable  in  its  parts. ' ' 

This  looks  as  though  it  might  lead  us  by  degrees  to  romanticism. 
But  in  a  moment  we  are  brought  stoutly  back  within  the  Augus- 
tan enclosure.  The  Orlando  Furioso  of  Ariosto  was  frequently 
compared  with  The  Faerie  Queene,  by  the  neo-classicists,  much 
to  the  reproach  of  the  former.  Like  a  true  Augustan,  Hughes 
insists  that  it  is  Spenser's  moral  allegory  which  exalts  Ariosto 's 
Romantic  trash  into  heroic  poetry. 

"In  the  Orlando  Furioso  we  everywhere  meet  with  an  exuberant 
invention,  joined  with  great  liveliness  and  facility  of  description,  yet 
debased  by  frequent  mixtures  of  the  comick  genius,  as  well  as  many 
shocking  indecorums.  .  .  .  On  the  other  hand,  Spenser's  Fable,  though 
often  wild,  is,  as  I  have  observed,  always  emblematical;  and  this  may 
very  much  excuse  likewise  that  air  of  romance  in  which  he  has  followed 
the  Italian  author.  The  perpetual  stories  of  knights,  giants,  castles,  and 
enchantments,  and  all  that  train  of  legendary  adventures,  would  indeed 
appear  very  trifling,  if  Spenser  had  not  found  a  way  to  turn  them  into 
Allegory,  or  if  a  less  masterly  hand  had  filled  up  the  draught;  but  it  is 
surprising  to  observe  how  much  the  strength  of  the  painting  is  superior 
to  the  design." 

It  is  characteristic  neo-classicism  in  Hughes  to  select,  as  one  of 
the  great  cantos  of  The  Faerie  Queene,  the  very  unimpressive 
episode  of  Duessa's  visit  to  Hell,  doubtless  because  it  seems  like 
an  "imitation"  of  Virgil.^^  But  his  taste  is  generally  of  a  high 
order.  He  takes  delight  in  the  first  appearance  of  Prince  Arthur, 
the  first  description  of  Belphoebe,  the  Mammon  episode,   the 


16  Faerie  Queene,  1.  5. 


148  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.    [Vol.  2 

Bower  of  Bliss,  the  Garden  of  Adonis,  the  Masque  of  Cupid,  the 
marriage  of  the  Thames  and  the  Medway,  Colin  Clout  piping 
to  the  Graces,  the  Mutability  fragment.  He  names,  indeed,  prac- 
tically all  of  the  supreme  passages  as  his  chosen  reading.  There 
was,  perhaps,  a  tinge  of  romanticism  in  Hughes.  Some  interest- 
ing lines  in  his  Essay  on  Allegorical  Poetry  might  be  classed  as 
romantic  with  considerable  plausibility. 

^'Allegory  is  indeed  the  Fairy  Land  of  poetry,  peopled  by  imagina- 
tion; its  inhabitants  are  so  many  apparitions;  its  woods,  caves,  wild 
beasts,  rivers,  mountains,  and  palaces,  are  produced  by  a  kind  of  magical 
power,  and  are  all  visionary  and  typical;  and  it  abounds  in  such  licenses 
as  would  be  shocking  and  monstrous,  if  the  mind  did  not  attend  to  the 
mystick  sense  contained  under  them. ' ' 

But  few  romanticists  would  defend  allegory  with  such  warmth. 
Romantic  eloquence  and  neo-classical  reasoning  I  should  call  this. 
Doubtless  Hughes,  like  all  large  men,  was  both  romantic  and 
classical.  But  the  essential  feature  to  us  is  that,  like  the  other 
critics  of  his  time,  he  found  Spenser,  judged  by  purely  Augustan 
standards,  a  great  poet.  We  may  dismiss  him  by  citing  what 
seems  to  have  been  his  most  ambitious  attempt  to  hit  off  Spen- 
ser's qualities  concisely  and  comprehensively.  It  is  one  of  the 
most  acute  and  inclusive  criticisms  of  Spenser  ever  made. 

^*  [Spenser]  was  of  the  serious  turn,  had  an  exalted  and  elegant  mind, 
a  warm  and  boundless  fancy,  and  was  an  admirable  imager  of  virtues  and 
vices,  which  was  his  particular  talent.  The  embellishments  of  description 
are  rich  and  lavish  in  him  beyond  comparison;  and  as  this  is  the  most 
striking  part  of  poetry,  especially  to  young  readers,  I  take  it  to  be  the 
reason  that  he  has  been  the  father  of  more  poets  among  us  than  any 
other  of  our  writers." 

Joseph  Spence,  the  Boswell  of  Pope,  was  another  important 
Augustan  admirer  of  Spenser  who  may  be  grouped  among  the 
scholars  with  Hughes.  In  a  Dissertation  on  the  Defects  of  Spen- 
ser's Allegory  he  found  the  fioet  not  fulfilling  certain  neo-classi- 
cal requirements.  Spenser,  it  seems,  should  not  have  mixed  the 
"fables  of  Heathendom  with  the  truths  of  Christianity." 
Boileau  had  damned  this  procedure.  Spenser,  too,  was  occasion- 
ally guilty  of  misrepresenting  the  allegories  of  the  ancients.  This, 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  149 

to  be  sure,  is  mere  neo-classical  pedantry.  But  concerning  *'the 
Allegories  of  his  [Spenser's]  own  invention"  the  censor  wrote 
some  shrewd  criticisms  that  speak  well  for  the  soundness  of  neo- 
classicism  at  its  best.  Though  he  considered  the  invention  in 
The  Faerie  Queene  to  be  ''one  of  the  richest  and  most  beautiful 
that  perhaps  ever  was,"  he  found  good  cause  for  complaint. 
Spenser's  allegories  are  sometimes  too  complicated,   overdone.  /\  r^ 

Discord,  who  looks  in  two  directions,  whose  tongue,  even  heart, 
is  split,  is  justly  cited  as  an  example  of  distorted  fancy.  Spenser 
is  fairly  taken  to  task  for  his  freedom  in  describing  loathsome 
figures  with  filthy  detail.  The  poet  is  unfortunately  sometimes 
merely  extravagant  rather  than  great.  So  it  is  when  he  describes 
the  Dragon's  tail  as  three  furlongs  in  length.  These  and  similar 
sensible  complaints  are  made.  The  usual  regret  that  Spenser  fol- 
lowed Ariosto  too  closely  and  the  ancients  too  little  is  retailed. 
There  is  the  orthodox  lament  at  the  need  of  rules. 

''The  reason  of  my  reproducing  these  instances,  is  only  to  show  what 
faults  the  greatest  Allegorist  may  commit;  whilst  the  manner  of  allegor- 
izing is  left  upon  so  unfixed  and  irregular  a  footing  as  it  was  in  his  time, 
and  is  still  among  us. ' ' 

And  Spence  goes  on  to  apologize  profusely  for  his  strictures  and 
shows  unmistakable  enthusiasm  for  The  Faerie  Queene. 

**If  they  [the  faults  noted]  should  prejudice  a  reader  at  all  against 
so  fine  a  writer;  let  him  read  almost  any  one  of  his  entire  Cantos,  and  it 
will  reconcile  him  to  him  again." 

Mr.  Phelps  and  Mr.  Beers,  in  asserting  that  the  Augustans 
looked  with  dull  eyes  on  Spenser,  write  of  the  apologetic  tone  of 
his  defenders.  But  here,  at  least,  is  a  solid  Augustan  who  apolo- 
gizes to  Augustans  for  presuming  to  take  Spenser  to  task. 

John  Upton,  the  editor  of  Spenser,  passed  far  beyond  any 
other  neo-classicist  in  his  reconcilement  of  The  Faerie  Queene 
and  augustanism.  His  Remarks  on  the  Action  and  History  of 
the  Faerie  Queene  strove  zealously  but  somewhat  speciously  to 
defend  Spenser's  unity  on  purely  classical  grounds. 

''How  readily  has  every  one  acquiesced  in  Dryden's  opinion?  'That 
the  action  of  this  Poem  is  not  one'." 


150  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

Critics,  we  are  told,  attacked  old  Homer  once  in  the  same  way. 
So  Upton  sets  out  to  vindicate  Homer  and  Spenser  in  one  breath 
'*as  they  have  both  fallen  under  one  common  censure."  Spen- 
ser's action  centres  around  Arthur  as  Homer's  around  Achilles. 

"Nor  can  it  be  fairly  objected  to  the  unity  of  the  Iliad,  that,  when 
Achilles  is  removed  from  the  scene  of  action,  you  scarcely  hear  him 
mentioned  in  several  books.'' 

Agammemnon,  Diomed,  Hector  become  the  heroes  of  successive 
books. 

"For  his  extensive  plan  required  his  different  heroes  to  be  shown  in 
their  different  characters  and  attitudes.  What,  therefore,  you  allow  to 
the  old  Grecian,  be  not  so  ungracious  as  to  deny  your  own  countryman.'' 

"Again  'tis  observable  that  Homer's  poem  though  he  sings  the  anger 
of  Achilles,  is  not  called  the  Achilleid,  but  the  Iliad;  because  the  action 
was  at  Troy.  So  Spenser  does  not  call  his  Poem  by  the  name  of  his  chief 
hero:  but  because  his  chief  hero  sought  for  the  Faerie  Queene  in  Fairy 
Land,  and  therein  performed  his  various  adventures,  therefore  he  entitled 
his  Poem  The  Faerie  Queene. ' ' 

Homer's  device  of  keeping  Achilles  away  from  the  field  until  he 
outshines  all  is  compared  with  the  purposed  holding  oif  of  Arthur 
till  the  end  where  he  was  to  accomplish  all  that  the  other  knights 
had  failed  to  do. 

Upton  is  unique  in  so  stoutly  maintaining  Spenser's  absolute 
agreement  with  Homer.  But  it  is  obvious  that  he  did  not  strike 
at  the  roots  of  the  matter.  His  glittering  palace  of  argument 
was  erected  on  sand  like  the  House  of  Pride : 

' '  A  stately  Pallace  built  of  squared  bricke. 
Which  cunningly  was  without  mortar  laid. 
Whose  wals  were  high,  but  nothing  strong  nor  thick, 
And  golden  foile  all  over  them  displaid. " 

These  more  authoritative  voices  were  swelled  by  many  less 
elaborate  but  equally  laudatory  utterances.  The  good  Wesley 
family  left  tributes.  Samuel  Wesley,  the  elder,  laid  down  poetic 
precepts  in  his  Epistle  to  a  Friend  concerning  Poetry  (1700)  and 
exhorted  him  that  he  might  "Some  new  Milton  or  a  Spenser 
grow."    Samuel  Wesley,  the  younger,  versified  Addison's  Spen- 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  151 

serian  allegory  of  The  Battle  of  the  Sexes  already  mentioned.^^ 
John  Wesley  among  other  works,  recommended  to  Methodists 
Spenser's  Faerie  Queene  in  the  second  year  of  a  course  in  aca- 
demic learning.  An  essay  Of  the  Old  English  Poets  and  Poetry 
in  The  Muses'  Mercury  for  June,  1707,  praised  The  Faerie 
Queene  which  "Surpriz'd  and  charmed  everybody,  and  still  has 
the  same  Effect. ' '  Giles  Jacob,  in  An  Historical  Account  of  the 
Lives  and  Writings  of  Our  most  Considerable  English  Poets 
(1720)  and  in  the  Poetical  Register  (1723),  praised  Spenser  in 
the  manner  of  Dryden  and  Hughes. 

**He  was  the  first  of  our  English  Poets  that  ever  brought  Heroick 
Poesy  to  any  Perfection;  and  Dryden  says  the  English  have  only  to 
boast  of  Spenser  and  Milton  in  Heroick  Poetry. 

**His  Fairy  Queen,  for  great  Invention  and  Poetick  Height,  is  judged 
little  inferiour,  if  not  equal  to  the  chief  of  the  antient  Greeks  and  Latins. 
He  had  a  large  Spirit,  a  sharp  Judgement,  and  a  Genius  beyond  any  that 
have  writ  since  Virgil;  his  Flights  of  Fancy  are  noble  and  his  Execution 
excellent;  but  sometimes  his  Judgement  is  overborne  by  the  Torrent  of 
his  Imagination,i8  and  he  seem'd  to  want  a  true  Idea  and  Uniformity; 
though  whatever  Fault  this  may  be,  he  endows  all  his  Heroes  with  some 
moral  Virtue  (though  in  a  romantick  Story)  and  makes  Instruction  the 
Subject  of  his  Epick  Poem,  which  is  very  much  to  his  Praise." 

Elizabeth  Cooper's  Historical  and  Poetical  Medley  or  Muses 
Library  (1737)  shows  considerable  knowledge  of  Spenser's  con- 
temporaries and  some  novelty  of  critical  opinion.  In  praise  of 
Buckhurst  's  combination  of  ' '  allegory  and  fable ' '  she  adds : 

' '  Spencer  made  a  Noble  Use  of  so  fine  a  model,  overflowing  with 
Tenderness,  Courtesy,  and  Benevolence,  reconciling  Magnificence  with 
Decorum,  Love,  Fidelity;  and,  together  with  Fairfax,  opening  to  us  a  new 
World  of  Ornament,  Elegance,  and  Taste. 

She  voices  a  sentiment  that  grows  clamorous  with  men  like  the 

Wartons : 

* '  Though  Chaucer  and  Spenser  are  ever  nam  'd  with  much  Eespect,  not 
many  are  intimately  acquainted  with  their  beauties. '  ^ 

But  this  assertion  cannot  be  taken  as  an  argument  for  any 
notable  unpopularity  of  Spenser  in  the  eighteenth  century  when 


17  Poems  on  Several  Occasions,  second  edition,  1763.     Wesley  says  the 
first  edition  was  printed  without  his  knowledge. 

18  This  clause  is  almost  verbatim  from  Hughes. 


152  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

we  consider  how  narrow  is  his  audience  today.  Like  all  good 
Augustans,  she  bemoans  the  fact  that  Spenser  **  debauch 't  his 
taste  with  the  extravagancies  of  Ariosto."  She  observes,  like 
the  other  critics,  that  his  influence  has  been  great.  And  she 
chooses  for  her  selection  the  Masque  of  Cupid,  not  because  it  is 
the  best  passage  possible  but  because  she  thinks  it  is  less  known. 
Of  greater  importance  is  Mr.  Cihher's  Lives  of  the  Foets^^ 
because  it  is  a  patchwork  of  critical  dicta  from  Dryden,  Hughes 
and  others,  and  represents  the  consensus  of  opinions  among  the 
cultivated  Augustans  of  the  first  half  of  the  century.  It  shows, 
moreover,  some  learning  and  a  real  knowledge  of  Spenser 's  minor 
works. 

**No  writer  ever  found  a  nearer  way  to  the  heart  than  he,2o  and  his 
verses  have  a  peculiar  happiness  of  recommending  the  author  to  our 
friendship  as  well  as  raising  our  admiration;  one  cannot  read  without 
fancying  oneself  transported  into  Fairy  Land,  and  there  conversing  with 
the  Graces,  in  that  enchanted  region.21  In  elegance  of  thinking  and  fer- 
tility of  imagination,  few  of  our  English  authors  have  approached  him 
and  no  writers  have  such  power  as  he  to  awake  the  spirit  of  poetry  in 
others.  Cowley  owns  that  he  derived  his  inspiration  from  him;  and  I 
have  heard  the  celebrated  Mr.  James  Thomson,  the  author  of  the  Seasons, 
and  justly  esteemed  one  of  our  best  descriptive  poets,  say,  that  he  formed 
himself  upon  Spenser:  and  how  closely  he  pursued  the  model,  and  how 
nobly  he  has  imitated  him,  whoever  reads  his  Castle  of  Indolence  with 
taste  will  readily  confess. ' ' 

The  critic  announces  emphatically: 

^'To  produce  authorities  in  favour  of  Spenser,  as  a  poet,  I  should 
reckon  an  affront  to  his  memory." 

He  thinks  that  ''the  works  of  Spenser  will  never  perish."  He 
attacks  the  obsolete  words.  He  criticizes  the  unity  of  The  Faerie 
Queene  exactly  as  Dryden,  Hughes,  and  Thomas  Warton  criti- 
cized it.  But  there  is  enough  enthusiasm  and  enough  that  is  new 
to  convince  us. 


19  The  exact  authorship  of  this  work  is,  I  believe,  still  a  matter  of  dis- 
pute. Nor  do  I  know  the  date  of  the  first  edition.  I  have  used  the  edition 
of  1758. 

20  Verbatim  in  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Cooper. 

21  This  clause  is  substantially  from  Hughes. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Speriser.  153 

A  reference  in  William  Whitehead's  A  Charge  to  the  Poets 
(1762),  a  plea  for  catholic  taste,  has  something  of  the  interest  of 
Cihher's  Lives  in  that  it  gives  us  a  suggestion  of  the  opinions  of 
the  cultivated  many. 

**Some  hate  all  rhyme;  some  seriously  deplore 
That  Milton  wants  that  one  enchantment  more. 
Tir  'd  with  th '  ambiguous  tale  or  antique  phrase, 
O'er  Spenser's  happiest  paintings,  loveliest  lays, 
Some  heedless  pass:  while  some  with  transport  view 
Each  quaint  old  word,  which  scarce  Eliza  knew. 
And,  eager  as  the  fancied  knights,  prepare 
The  lance,  and  combat  in  ideal  war 
Dragons  of  lust,  and  giants  of  despair 
Why  be  it  so;  and  what  each  thinks  the  best 
Let  each  enjoy:  but  not  condemn  the  rest." 

We  now  turn  to  the  great  dictator.  It  is  unfortunate  that 
Samuel  Johnson  left  us  no  rounded  estimate  of  Spenser.  His 
allusions  to  him  are  frequent,  but  they  are  mainly  due  to  a  vigor- 
ous and  wholesome  crusade  which  Johnson  was  making  against 
two  hollow  literary  fashions:  the  insipid  pastoral  and  the  arti- 
ficial **  Imitation. "  In  his  Life  of  West  Dr.  Johnson  laid  his 
heavy  hand  on  '  *  Imitation. " 

**His  Imitations  of  Spenser  are  very  successfully  performed,  both 
with  respect  to  the  metre,  the  language,  and  the  fiction;  and  being 
engaged  at  once  by  the  excellence  of  the  sentiments,  and  the  artifice  of 
the  copy,  the  mind  has  two  amusements  to-gether.  But  such  composi- 
tions are  not  to  be  reckoned  among  the  great  achievements  of  intellect, 
because  their  effect  is  local  and  temporary,  they  appeal  not  to  reason  or 
passion,  but  to  memory,  and  pre-suppose  an  accidental  or  artificial  State 
of  mind.  An  imitation  of  Spenser  is  nothing  to  a  reader,  however  acute, 
by  whom  Spenser  has  never  been  perused.  Works  of  this  kind  may  de- 
serve praise,  as  proofs  of  great  industry,  and  great  nicety  of  observa- 
tion; but  the  highest  praise,  the  praise  of  genius,  they  cannot  claim. 
The  noblest  beauties  of  art  are  those  of  which  the  effect  is  co-extended 
with  rational  nature,  or  at  least  with  the  whole  circle  of  polished  life; 
what  is  less  than  this  can  be  only  pretty,  the  plaything  of  fashion  and 
the  amusement  of  a  day. ' ' 

It  is  absurd,  of  course  tQ  quote  this  admirable  criticism  as  evi- 
dence that  Johnson  thought  meanly  of  Spenser.  The  impressive 
fact  is  that  the  doctor  had  hit  upon  one  of  the  greatest  causes 
of  the  insignificance  of  eighteenth  century  poetry.    The  Augus- 


154  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

tan  ideal  of  imitation  has  its  good  points.  The  more  romantic 
poets  have  imitated  too,  but  with  a  noble  independence  as  well. 
As  practised  by  the  Augustans  it  became  mere  languid  academic 
exercise.  Except  for  Thomson's  Castle  of  Indolence  and  Shen- 
stone's  School-Mistress f  which  transcend  the  mere  exercise  in 
versification,  the  Spenserian  imitation  of  the  eighteenth  century 
deserved  the  doctor's  censure.  In  the  Rambler  for  May  14,  1751, 
Johnson  proved  that  imitation,  not  Spenser,  was  his  aversion  bj^ 
a  well-directed  attack  on  the  ideal  of  imitation  in  general.  In  a 
spirit  far  from  Augustan  he  strikes  at  the  very  roots  of  the 
matter. 

*'In  the  boundless  regions  of  possibility,  which  fiction  claims  for  her 
dominion,  there  are  a  thousand  flowers  unplucked,  a  thousand  fountains 
unexhausted,  combinations  of  imagery  yet  unobserved,  and  races  of  ideal 
inhabitants  not  hitherto  described. ' ' 

Imitation,  he  thinks,  is  ruinous  to  the  imagination.  Even  Virgil 
is  shown  to  have  been  often  seduced  into  blemishes  in  his  imita- 
tions of  Homer  because  he  was  too  eager  to  use  all  of  Homer's 
material.  The  doctor  then  turns  to  the  pestiferous  Spenserian 
imitation. 

"To  imitate  the  fictions  and  sentiments  of  Spenser  can  incur  no 
reproach,  for  allegory  is  perhaps  one  of  the  most  pleasing  vehicles  of 
instruction.  But  I  am  far  from  extending  the  same  respect  to  his  diction 
or  his  stanza.  His  style  was  in  his  own  time  allowed  to  be  vicious,  so 
darkened  with  old  words,  peculiarities  of  phrase,  and  so  remote  from 
common  use,  that  Jonson  boldly  pronounces  him  to  have  written  no 
language. '  '22 

Outside  of  the  attack  on  imitation,  Johnson  is  here  purely  neo- 
classical. He  praises  the  moral  allegory  and  damns  the  stanza 
and  diction.  Yet  in  the  Preface  to  his  Dictionary,  compiled  at 
the  same  time  he  was  at  work  upon  the  Rambler,  he  cites  Spen- 
ser's language  as  standard  for  its  time.^^ 

The  burly  doctor  smote  the  pastoral,  another  curse  of  Augus- 
tan poetry,  in  the  Rambler  for  July  24,  1750.     He  was  plainly 


22  Johnson  doubtless  knew  only  the  criticisms  of  Sidney,  Jonson,  Daven- 
ant,  none  of  the  host  of  admiring  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  century  refer- 
ences to  Spenser  before  Dryden  's. 

23  Preface,  edition  1825,  p.  48. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  155 

infuriated  by  the  languid  eclogues  of  his  day  and  was  hardly  in 
the  mood  to  sing  the  praises  of  the  masters  who  were  indirectly 
responsible  for  their  existence.  Johnson  gives  some  praise  to 
Virgil  but  has  much  to  blame.  His  only  reference  to  The  Shep- 
heards  Calender  is  a  just  and  severe  attack  upon  the  crabbed 
archaisms  of  November.  His  general  animadversions  are  per- 
fectly sound.  He  points  out  the  inconsistency  between  the  homely 
dialect  and  the  learned  thought  that  many  pastorals  affect. 

Yet  praise  of  Spenser  is  not  lacking  in  Johnson's  works.  In 
his  Life  of  Ambrose  Philips  he  retails  the  high  praise  of  Spen- 
ser's pastoral  poetry  in  the  Guardian  which  we  have  already 
seen,  though  he  says  nothing  at  first  hand.  That  he  could  appre- 
ciate a  good  Spenserian  imitation  is  proved  by  his  admiration 
for  Shenstone's  School-Mistress.  Two  passages  in  the  Preface 
to  Shakespeare  (1765)  imply  some  praise  of  Spenser.  Of  Shake- 
speare 's  diction  and  versification  he  writes : 

'  *  To  him  we  must  ascribe  the  praise,  unless  Spenser  may  divide  it  with 
him,  of  having  first  discovered  to  how  much  smoothness  and  harmony  the 
English  language  could  be  softened. ' ' 

A  propos  of  A  Midsummer-Night 's  Dream  we  read : 

"Fairies  in  his  time  were  much  in  fashion;  common  tradition  had 
made  them  familiar,  and  Spenser's  poem  had  made  them  great." 

It  is  greatly  to  be  regretted  that  Johnson  never  wrote  defin- 
itely on  Spenser.  His  sane  criticism,  his  clear-eyed  kindliness 
would  have  made  a  great  contribution.  Reports  concerning  the 
omission  of  Spenser  in  The  Lives  of  the  Poets  are  conflicting. 
A  Life  of  Johnson  by  Thomas  Tyson  in  The  Gentleman's  Maga- 
zine for  December,  1784^*  states  that : 

''His  [Johnson's]  employers  wanted  him  to  undertake  the  life  of 
Spenser.     But  he  said  Warton  had  left  little  or  nothing  for  him  to  do." 

In  Hannah  More 's  Anecdotes  she  relates : 

''Johnson  told  me  he  had  been  with  the  king  that  morning,  who  en- 
joined him  to  add  Spenser  to  his  Lives  of  the  Poets.  I  seconded  the 
motion;  he  promised  to  think  of  it  but  said  the  booksellers  had  not 
included  him  in  their  list  of  poets. '  '25 


2-1  Boswell    {Life,  ed.  Hill,  3,  308)    says  Tyson's  statements   are  unre- 
liable. 

25  Hill 's  note  says  the  Lives  were  not  directed  by  Johnson  but  ' '  he  was 
to  furnish  a  Preface  to  any  poet  the  booksellers  pleased."  {Life,  3,  137.) 


156  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology,     [Vol.  2 

Johnson's  letters  to  Warton  are  full  of  a  kindly  interest  in  the 
forthcoming  Observations  on  the  Faerie  Queene.  He  offers 
assistance.    But  a  critique  on  Spenser  never  came. 

It  seems  to  me  fair  to  assume  that  Johnson's  admiration  for 
Spenser  was  genuine  and  considerable.  His  most  harsh  animad- 
versions appear  only  where  he  is  heated  in  the  act  of  striking 
some  contemporary  affectation,  imtation  or  the  pastoral,  and  they 
were  probably  exaggerated  for  his  main  purpose.  Johnson  was 
a  truer  classicist  than  the  earlier  Augustans  and  pointed  to 
some  of  their  most  serious  faults  with  unerring  skill. 

Johnson's  Phillipics  against  imitation  were  echoed  by  many 
who  saw  their  justice.  Robert  Lloyd,  wayward  debauchee  and 
light-hearted  imitator  of  Mat  Prior's  Familiar  Verse,  wrote  a 
Spenserian  poem,  before  he  damned  the  genre,  which  demands 
attention  because  of  its  literary  criticism.  In  1751  he  published 
The  Progress  of  Envy,  a  Spenserian  imitation,  in  which  he 
abused  poor  Lauder,  the  Scotch  tutor  who  spent  his  learning  in 
the  endeavour  to  convict  Milton  of  plagiarism.  The  poem  is  cast 
in  a  form  perhaps  a  compromise  of  the  Spenserian  stanza  and 
Prior's  adaptation  in  his  Ode  to  the  Queen.^^  The  poem  opens 
with  the  favorite  Augustan  imitation  of  Spenser's  moralistic 
overtures — here  a  lament  at  the  power  of  Envy.  Mount  Par- 
nassus is  described.  On  either  side  of  Phoebus  sat  "a  peerless 
wight,"  Spenser  and  Milton.  Not  far  from  these  Dan  Chaucer, 
with  reverend  locks  silvered  with  eld,  was  seated  in  lofty  emi- 
nence. Next  was  Shakespeare,  "irregularly  great."  Nearby 
stood  the  beautiful  maids  Fancy  and  Nature.  But  Envy,  leav- 
ing Acheron,  went  to  the  gloomy  cave  of  her  deformed  sister 
Malice  and  exhorted  her  to  attack  Milton.  In  a  serpent-drawn 
chariot  they  went  to  Caledonian  plains,  where  dwelt  the  eldest 
son  of  Malice  (Lauder).  Together  they  attacked  Parnassus  and 
the  son  of  Malice  overcame  Milton  by  his  venom.  But  the  poet 
recovered  when  "Douglas  and  Truth"  appeared. 

In  1755  Lloyd  raised  his  voice,  with  Johnson  and  other  dis- 


ss ababbcbcC  and  ababcdcdeE.    Lloyd  used  a  stanza 
rhyming  ababcdcdD. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  157 

senters,  against  this  very  modish  passion  of  imitation.  In  To 
....  about  to  Publish  a  Volume  he  attacked  even  those  who 
strove  to  imitate  ''Mat  Prior's  unaffected  ease,"  a  thing  which 
he  himself  never  ceased  doing  throughout  his  career.  Equally- 
cursed  are  those  who  imitate  Swift,  Milton,  or  Pope. 

"Others,  who  aim  at  fancy,  choose 
To  woo  the  gentle  Spenser's  Muse. 
The  poet  fixes  for  his  theme 
An  allegory  or  a  dream: 
Fiction  and  truth  to-gether  joins 
Through  a  long  waste  of  flimsy  lines: 
Fondly  believes  his  fancy  glows 
And  image  upon  image  grows: 
Thinks  his  strong  Muse  takes  wondrous  flights, 
Whene'er  she  sings  of  peerless  wights, 
Of  dens,  of  palfreys,  spells  and  knights, 
Till  allegory,  Spenser's  veil 
T '  instruct  and  please  in  moral  tale, 
With  him's  no  veil  the  truth  to  shroud, 
But  one  impenetrable  cloud." 

All  this  is  very  true,  but  the  outcries  of  Johnson  and  his  fol- 
lowers were  of  no  avail.  With  Oliver  Goldsmith,  Johnson's 
gentle  admirer,  we  must  cease  our  examination  of  the  bootless 
complaints  against  imitation  and  of  the  long  role  of  Augustan 
critics,  though  their  opinions  were  still  voiced  by  many  sur- 
vivers  for  some  time  after  the  Romantic  Triumph.^^  Goldsmith 
followed  Johnson  in  his  admiration  for  Shenstone  but  general 
opposition  to  Spenserian  imitation.^*  But  he  showed  a  warm 
appreciation  of  Spenser  himself  in  a  review  of  Church's  edition 
of  The  Faerie  Queene  in  Smollett's  Critical  Review  (February, 
1759 ) .    Thanks  to  Church : 

"We  can  now  tread  the  regions  of  fancy  without  interruption,  and 
expatiate  on  fairy  wilds  such  as  our  great  magician  has  been  pleased  to 
represent  them." 

Unlike  Johnson,  Goldsmith  shared  the  romanticists'  distaste  for 
the  allegory. 


27  Among  the  many  protests  against  Spenserian  imitation  is  one  which 
should  not  be  completely  passed  over.  This  is  by  Hume  (History  of  Eng- 
land, ed.  1773,  V,  492,  VI,  195). 

28  The  Beauties  of  English  Poesy,  1767,  vol.  1,  introductory  remarks  to 
Shenstone 's  School-mistress. 


158  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

''There  is  a  pleasing  tranquillity  of  mind  which  ever  attends  the 
reading  of  this  ancient  poet.  We  leave  the  ways  of  the  present  world, 
and  all  the  ages  of  primeval  innocence  and  happiness  rise  to  our  view. 
.  .  .  The  imagination  of  his  reader  leaves  reason  behind,  pursues  the 
tale  without  considering  the  allegory,  and  upon  the  whole,  is  charmed 
without  instruction." 

But  there  are  plenty  of  fashionable  Augustan  dicta.  '  *  No  poet, ' ' 
he  states,  '* enlarges  the  imagination  more  than  Spenser."  He 
cites  Cowley,  Gray,  Akenside,  and  others  as  examples.  He  warns 
poets  to  imitate  ''his  beauties"  not  ''his  words"  which  are 
"justly  fallen  into  disuse."  He  makes  the  usual  complaint  that 
Spenser  followed  Virgil  too  little  and  vicious  mediaeval  and 
Italian  models  too  much.  But  the  essay  shows  clearly  how  native 
to  Goldsmith's  gentle  irresponsible  spirit  were  the  lovely  dreams 
of  The  Faerie  Queens. 

I  believe  that  we  have  evidence  a  plenty,  probably  ad  nauseam^ 
for  my  contentions.  But  my  conception  of  the  August ans  is 
worth  establishing  at  the  expense  of  much  dry-as-dust  catalogu- 
ing. We  are  gradually  outgrowing  the  ill-considered  contempt 
with  which  our  romantic  grandfathers  estimated  the  Augustans. 
Let  us  now  give  over  that  somewhat  supercilious  or  even  false 
spirit  of  toleration  with  which  we  try  to  justify  the  Augustans  in 
so  far  as  they  show  symptoms,  real  or  chimerical,  of  romanticism. 
Take  them  for  what  they  were  and  what  do  we  find?  We  find 
that  they  could  at  least  accord  a  poet  like  Spenser  warm  appre- 
ciation from  a  purely  neo-classical  point  of  view  and  that  interest 
in  Spenser  did  not  necessarily  have  anything  whatever  to  do 
with  romanticism.  We  find  that  the  term  ' '  Spenserian  Revival, ' ' 
which  has  long  decked  the  chapters  of  many  a  text-book,  is  a 
misnomer.  We  find  that  the  Augustans,  like  ourselves,  occas- 
ionally said  asinine  things  about  Spenser  but  that  they  had  an 
appreciation  of  his  high  seriousness  much  sounder  than  that 
which  has  gone  current  since  the  Triumph  of  Romanticism. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  159 


VI  ; 

THE  TRIUMPH  OF  ROMANTICISM 

In  the  foregoing  pages  it  has  been  maintained  that  a  thorough- 
going neo-elassicist  could  admire  Spenser  discerningly  and 
imitate  him  with  perfect  consistency.  Yet  the  influence  of  Spen- 
ser has  been  considered  by  Professor  Phelps  and  Professor  Beers 
as  one  of  the  great  causes  of  the  romantic  revival.  With  this 
idea  I  cannot  agree.  It  is  rather  that,  once  romanticism  had 
gained  a  foothold,  Spenser  was  imitated  in  a  romantic  way.  The 
Augustans  had  admired  Spenser  for  his  moral  earnestness — as 
Milton  had  admired  him.  They  appreciated  the  beauties  of  his 
allegory  which  we  often  mock  hastily  and  inconsistently.  Despite 
their  occasional  disapproval  of  his  stanza  and  diction,  they  were 
naturally  always  impressed  by  his  highly  wrought  technique. 
It  was  in  no  spirit  of  romantic  revolt,  then,  that  an  Augustan 
penned  his  mechanical  "Imitation  of  Spenser."  But  once  the 
romantic  seeds  were  sown  there  was  infinite  suggestion  to  be 
found  in  Spenser  for  an  Apostle  of  Wonder. 

The  earliest  exponents  of  what  they  vaguely  termed  Gothic 
or  romantic  were  often  not  strong  men  with  a  new  faith,  but 
decadents  weary  of  the  old.  It  was  the  passion  of  jaded,  bookish 
minds  for  novelty  in  no  exalted  sense  rather  than  that  spirit 
of  idealised  aspiration  by  which  Professor  W.  A.  Neilson  has 
finely  characterized  the  force  which  stirred  the  great  poets  of 
the  early  nineteenth  century.  The  tinsel  trappings  of  a  Walpole, 
surely,  are  not  romanticism  according  to  our  exalted  ideas.  The 
eighteenth  century  men  often  connected  romanticism  with  a  com- 
fortable melancholy  and  crocodile  tears.  Even  in  our  o\\ti  day 
Edgar  Allan  Poe  has  argued  for  the  indispensability  of  melan- 
choly (much  more  sincere,  to  be  sure),  in  poetry.  The  jaded 
writers  of  the  latter  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  cultivated 
graveyards,  gloomy  abbeys,  thunderstorms,  all  comfortably  con- 


160  University  of  California  Fublications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

jured  up  in  the  warm  and  snug  seclusion  of  the  study.  It  was 
as  artificial  as  Pope's  pastorals.  And  we  must  be  cautious  about 
linking  this  romantic  pose  too  closely  witli  the  various  types  of 
romanticism  represented  by  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  Scott, 
Byron,  Shelley,  and  Keats.  With  this  warning  in  mind  we  may 
turn  to  the  men  who  are  often  named  as  the  forerunners  of 
romanticism. 

The  name  of  William  Thompson,  a  minor  poet  of  talents  ill 
rewarded  by  posterity,  should  be  mentioned  as  that  of  the  earliest 
romanticist  who  has  any  proper  connection  with  our  study. 
Thompson  had  a  very  catholic  taste.  He  admired  Elizabethan, 
Marinist,  and  Augustan  alike.  But  he  is  only  a  romanticist  in 
so  far  as  he  is  a  belated  Elizabethan,  and  he  sounds  none  of  the 
new  notes  that  we  shall  find  in  the  later  romanticism. 

The  preface  to  Thompson's  An  Hymn  to  May,  a  luxuriant 
imitation  of  Spenser,  contains,  however,  some  rather  remarkable 
doctrine  for  the  first  decades  of  the  eighteenth  century.^  It  is 
a  defence  of  his  Elizabethan  sensuousness. 

''As  Spenser  is  the  most  descriptive  and  florid  of  all  our  English 
writers,  I  attempted  to  imitate  his  manner  in  the  following  vernal  poem.  I 
have  been  very  sparing  of  the  antiquated  words  which  are  too  frequent 
in  most  of  the  imitations  of  this  author;  however  I  have  introduced  a  few 
here  and  there  which  are  explain  'd  at  the  bottom  of  each  page  where  they 
occur.  ...  I  followed  Fletcher's  measure  in  his  Purple  Island;  a  poem 
printed  at  Cambridge  in  twelve  cantos,  in  quarto,  scarce  heard  of  in  this 
age,  yet  the  best  in  the  allegorical  way  (next  to  the  Fairy  Queen),  in  the 
English  language.  I  hope  I  have  no  apology  to  make  for  describing  the 
the  beauties,  the  pleasures,  and  the  loves  of  the  season  in  too  tender  or 
too  florid  a  manner.  The  nature  of  the  subject  required  a  luxuriousness 
of  versification,  and  a  softness  of  sentiment;  but  they  are  pure  and  chaste 
at  the  same  time:  otherwise  this  canto  had  neither  ever  been  written  or 
offered  to  the  public." 

Here  is  romanticism  of  a  kind.  Thompson  is  certainly  one  of  the 
first  of  the  eighteenth  century  poets  to  seek  Spenser  rather  as  a 
poet  of  ardent  emotion  and  sensuous  glow  than  as  a  poet  of  vast 
moral  visions.    But  Thompson  uses  many  neo-classical  authori- 


1  An  Hymn  to  May  was  not  published  until  1757,  but  Thompson  was 
writing  poetry  with  this  same  romantic  richness  of  colour  at  least  as  early 
as  1736. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  161 

ties,  including  Prior,  Davenant,  and  Scaliger.  He  made  a  wide 
but  short-lived  reputation  and  certainly  could  not  have  had  any- 
appreciable  influence  on  the  rise  of  romanticism. 

Perhaps  no  men  among  the  early  romanticists  have  loomed 
larger  and  larger  in  the  eyes  of  recent  critics  than  the  brothers 
Joseph  and  Thomas  Warton.  Both  must  occupy  a  considerable 
position  in  any  history  of  Spenser's  influence.  Their  passion  for 
The  Faerie  Queene  was  doubtless  learned  from  their  father, 
Thomas  Warton,  senior,  who  wrote  a  very  Augustan  Spenserian 
imitation  in  the  stanza  adopted  by  William  Whitehead  and  a 
group  of  the  most  barren  followers  of  Spenser  that  fill  the  dull 
pages  of  a  history  of  eighteenth  century  poetry.  The  elder  War- 
ton's  poem.  Philander,  An  Imitation  of  Spencer:  Occasioned  hy 
the  Death  of  Mr.  William  Jening,  Nov.,  1706,  is  only  a  typical 
pastoral  elegy  of  the  time.  Two  stanzas  may  be  resurrected  to 
show  from  what  loins  sprang  the  great  Wartons. 

**When  rural  Spencer  sung,  the  listening  Swains 

Wou'd  oft'  forget  to  feed  the  fleecy  Throng; 

The  fleecy  Throng,  charm 'd  with  the  melting  Strains, 

Fed  not — ^but  on  the  Musick  of  his  Song 

His  MuUa  would  in  lingering  Bubbles  play. 
Till  his  pleas 'd  waters  stole  unwillingly  away. 

**And  cou'd  my  Verse  but  with  its  Theme  compare, 
Moving  as  Spencer  I  my  Grief  wou'd  tell; 
The  ravish 'd  Bard  shou'd  to  Elysium  hear 
A  second  Colin  mourn  a  second  Astrophel. 
My  lays  shou'd  more  than  equal  glory  boast 
And  the  fam'd  Mulla  be  in  smoother  Channel  lost.  "2 

The  good  man's  two  sons,  though  to  be  ranked  among  the  great- 
est students  of  Spenser,  did  not  improve  upon  their  father  on 
the  matter  of  Spenserian  imitations.  In  The  Pleasures  of  the 
Melancholy  Thomas  Warton  alludes  to  Spenser  in  a  somewhat 
romantic  spirt. 


2  A  reference,  of  course,  to  Spenser 's  Astrophel,  an  elegy  to  Sidney,  in 
the  same  stanza  as  Warton 's  elegy,  though  Spenser  did  not  here  employ 
his  final  alexandrine.  Joseph  Warton,  in  an  Ode  on  his  brother's  death  has 
a  similar  desireful  allusion  to  Spenser's  Astrophel  and  this  stanza  was 
almost  exclusively  employed  by  the  Wartons  in  their  imitations  of  Spenser. 


162  University  of  California  Puhlications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

"Such  mystic  visions  send  as  Spenser  saw 
When  through  bewildering  Fancy's  magic  maze, 
To  the  fell  house  of  Busyrane,  he  led 
Th '  unshaken  Britomart.  ..." 

But  his  own  imitations  are  so  frigid  and  remote  from  their  model 
that  were  they  our  only  evidence  we  should  suspect  that  Warton 
had  no  first-hand  knowledge  of  Spenser. 

It  is  practically  as  critics  only  that  the  Wartons  have  achieved 
any  permanence.  Here  they  have  been  scarcely  awarded  the  high 
position  they  should  occupy.  Joseph  Warton 's  magnum  opus 
is  the  famous  Essay  on  the  Genius  and  Writings  of  Pope  (1756). 
To  call  it,  as  Lowell  does,  '  *  The  earliest  public  official  declaration 
of  war  against  the  reigning  mode"  is  to  tempt  the  reader  into  a 
rather  too  exalted  notion  of  Warton 's  spirit  of  revolt.  To  be  sure, 
there  is  much  talk  about  things  that  are  ' '  Romantic ' '  and  about 
things  which  have  ' '  a  pleasing  wildness. ' '  But  the  reverence  for 
things  ''elegant"  and  "decorous"  and  the  horror  of  "impro- 
priety" is  even  more  frequently  expressed.  Certainly,  at  all 
events,  Joseph  Warton  had  an  acute  appreciation  of  Spenser. 
Apropos  of  an  attack  on  Pope 's  Alley,  he  wrote  a  sustained  pane- 
gyric on  The  Faerie  Queene.  Like  the  Augustans,  he  praised 
the  allegorical  "living  figures  whose  attitudes  and  behaviour 
Spenser  has  minutely  drawn  with  so  much  clearness  and  truth, 
that  we  behold  them  with  our  eyes,  as  plainly  as  we  do  on  the 
ceiling  of  the  banqueting-house. "  He  quotes  several  examples, 
concluding  with  the  picture  of  Jealousy,  and  cries^  out  with  con- 
tagious enthusiasm: 

''Here  all  is  in  life  and  motion;  here  we  behold  the  true  Poet  or 
Maker;  this  is  creation;  it  is  here,  might  we  cry  out  to  Spenser,  it  is  here 
that  you  display  to  us,  that  you  make  us  feel  the  sure  effects  of  genuine 
poetry. ' ' 

For  those  who  have  any  temptation  to  suspect  that  the  criticisms 
of  Johnson  and  others  on  Spenserian  imitations  implied  any 
hostility  to  Spenser,  it  may  be  well  to  note  that  Warton  looked 
askance  at  the  practice. 

*'It  has  been  fashionable  of  late  to  imitate  Spenser;  but  the  likeness 
of  most  of  these  copies  hath  consisted  rather  in  using  a  few  of  his  ancient 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  163 

expressions  than  in  catching  his  real  manner.  Some,  however,  have  been 
executed  with  happiness,  and  with  attention  to  that  simplicity,  that  ten- 
derness of  sentiment,  and  those  little  touches  of  nature,  that  constitute 
Spenser's  character." 

It  is  to  be  observed  that  this  is  only  the  usual  Augustan  criticism 
of  Spenser  and  that  these  are  the  very  points  which  have  too 
often  been  culpably  forgotten  by  romantic  critics  to  our  own 
day.  Warton's  ranking  of  English  poets,  at  the  close  of  the 
Essay,  is  the  most  famous  passage. 

*' Where,  then,  .  .  .  shall  we  with  justice  be  authorized  to  place  our 
admired  Pope?  Not,  assuredly,  in  the  same  rank  with  Spenser,  Shake- 
speare, and  Milton. ' ' 

The  whole  passage  is  a  remarkably  acute  bit  of  criticism.  It  is 
not  because  the  three  great  poets  were  exalted.  That  was  unnec- 
essary. They  were  praised  by  all.  But  the  placing  of  Pope  was 
the  great  stroke.  The  age  was  close  to  a  great  man,  in  the  same 
situation  as  certain  sonneteers  who  sang,  a  few  years  ago,  to 
*  *  Shakespeare,  Milton,  Tennyson. "  It  is  not  a  limitation  peculiar 
to  the  eighteenth  century  to  overestimate  their  own  poet.  War- 
ton's  prophetic  view  is  certainly  striking  in  an  age  of  smug  self- 
sufficiency.  He  seems  to  me  to  be  an  almost  thoroughgoing 
Augustan.  But  the  Augustans  produced  some  great  critics.  It 
was  perhaps  romantic  but  not  remarkably  romantic  to  write : 

"Where  are  the  lays  of  artful  Addison, 
Coldly  correct  to  Shakspear's  warblings  wild.'' 

Occasionally  he  adopted  the  romantic  pose.  But  when  he  was 
true  to  his  best  instincts  he  was  solid  Augustan. 

Thomas  Warton's  temperament  was  larger,  more  mellow  than 
that  of  his  brother.  It  is  not  that  he  was  more  of  a  romanticist. 
His  attitudes  toward  romanticism  and  Spenser  may  be  best  inter- 
preted through  two  lines  of  his  verse : 

*'As  oft,  reclin'd  on  CherwelPs  shelving  shore, 
I  trac'd  romantick  Spenser's  moral  page." 

The  word  "romantick"  here  is  in  a  precisely  opposite  situation 
of  that  of  today.    Then  it  was  vague  because  it  had  little  or  no 


164  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

meaning.  Now  it  is  vague  because  it  has  a  thousand  meanings. 
It  is  significant,  too,  that  Spenser  was  to  Warton  the  pleasant 
"moral"  Spenser  of  the  Augustans.  But  Warton  was  rich- 
spirited  enough  to  be  the  first  English  critic  to  apply  the  his- 
torical method  with  any  skill.  All  centuries  of  literature  swam 
into  his  learned  ken.  His  Observations  on  the  Faerie  Queene 
still  remains  the  best  book  ever  written  about  Spenser.  But 
Thomas  Warton  must  not  be  considered  as  a  very  serious  roman- 
tic revolter  and  therefore  forced,  as  an  ardent  admirer  of  Spenser, 
to  be  apologetic  in  an  unsympathetic  age.  His  complaint  that 
Spenser  was  "admired"  but  "neglected"  is  not  to  be  taken  as 
true  in  the  sense  of  being  a  peculiar  and  widespread  limitation 
of  his  age.  We  have  examined  a  considerable  body  of  evidence 
that  Spenser  was  widely  appreciated  in  the  first  half  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  by  those  who  were  ordained  then,  as  in  all  ages, 
to  love  him.  And  any  scholar  of  our  own  day  might  very 
accurately  refer  to  Spenser  as  "this  admired  but  neglected  poet." 
We  shall  presently  see,  too,  how  much  Warton  owed  to  his  Augus- 
tan predecessors  in  Spenserian  criticism. 

The  Observations  begins^  with  a  brief  review  of  romantic 
poetry,  from  Provencal  to  that  of  Ariosto  and  Tasso,  in  which 
we  at  once  perceive,  however  inadequate  the  account  from  the 
point  of  view  of  modern  investigators,  the  wide  vision  and  schol- 
arly solidity  of  the  man.  He  turns  a  calm  brow  from  grovelling 
pedants  and  he  is  equally  exalted  above  the  slap-dash  trifler  in 
letters  who  is  bound  in  by  his  own  age.  Warton  insists  that  in 
order  to  appreciate  a  poet  we  must  study  the  times  in  which 
he  lived.  He  finds  that  "Ariosto — rejecting  truth  for  magic 
and  preferring  the  ridiculous  excursions  of  Boyardo,  to  the  pro- 
priety and  uniformity  of  the  Grecian  and  the  Roman  models ' ' — 
wrote  a  very  heterodox  poem.  Beni  is  scored  for  comparing 
Ariosto  and  Homer.  Trissino  is  praised  for  having  "taste  and 
boldness  enough  to  publish  an  epic  poem  written  in  professed 
imitation  of  the  Iliad. ' ' 


3  Chapter  I,  On  the  Plan  and  Conduct  of  the  Faerie  Queene. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  165 

**Tasso  took  the  ancients  for  his  guides  but  was  still  too  sensible  of 
the  popular  prejudice  in  favour  of  ideal  beings,  and  romantic  adventures 
to  neglect  or  omit  them  entirely. 

'*Such  was  the  prevailing  taste  when  Spenser  projected  the  Faerie 
Queene. ' ' 

This  is  Augustan  criticism — the  regret  that  Spenser  was  misled 
by  the  damnable  Ariosto — pure  and  simple.  Warton  does  not 
attempt  to  praise  Ariosto  and  to  approve  Spenser's  choice  of 
models  as  we  shall  find  the  early  romanticists  doing.  He  only 
attempts  an  ample  explanation  by  the  use  of  the  historical 
method. 

The  plan  of  the  Faerie  Queene  is  now  examined  and  criticized 
just  as  Dryden,  Hughes,  and  many  more  had  analysed  it  and 
found  it  wanting.  Nay,  Warton  thinks  Dryden  is  too  mild  in  his 
condemnation  of  the  unity  of  the  poem.  Augustanism  is  ram- 
pant. Warton  says  it  is  "inartificial"  to  introduce  the  hero  of 
one  book  on  a  less  dangerous  exploit  later.  It  sullies  the  hero's 
lustre  and  does  little  for  the  unity. 

*'The  poet  might  have  established  twelVe  knights  without  an  Arthur 
or  an  Arthur  without  twelve  knights." 

Hughes  had  already  made  this  suggestion.  It  is  all  neo-classi- 
cal and  it  is  all  perfectly  just.  But  Warton  abruptly  strikes  a 
blow  for  the  defence.  Again  he  is  indebted  to  Hughes  for  the 
idea. 

''But  it  is  absurd  to  think  of  judging  Ariosto  or  Spenser  by  precepts 
which  they  did  not  attend  to.  We  who  live  in  the  days  of  writing  by  rule, 
are  apt  to  try  every  composition  by  those  laws  which  we  have  been  taught 
to  think  the  whole  criterion  of  excellence. ' ' 

Spenser's  poetry  is  "the  careless  exuberance  of  a  warm  imagina- 
tion and  a  strong  sensibility. ' '  He  *  *  wrote  rapidly  from  his  own 
feelings  which  at  the  same  time  were  naturally  noble."  "We 
scarcely  regret  the  loss"  of  "that  arrangement  and  economy 
which  Epic  severity  required"  in  the  appeal  of  "feelings  of  the 
heart  rather  than  the  cold  approbation  of  the  head. "  "In  read- 
ing Spenser ;  if  the  critic  is  not  satisfied,  yet  the  reader  is  trans- 


iir.^ 


166  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

ported."  Here,  at  last,  was  a  critic  large  enough  to  appreciate 
Augustan  sanity,  yet  able,  at  the  same  time,  to  look  beyond  the 
rules  if  so  required.  Now  w^e  stand  on  the  brink  of  romanticism. 
Warton  now  leads  us  through  a  pleasant  maze  of  facts  and 
speculations  concerning  Spenser's  sources  in  the  romances,  Greek 
legends,  Ariosto,  and  Chaucer.*  Here,  indeed,  is  a  romantic 
spirit  of  childlike  wonder  as,  like  Spenser  himself,  he  pores  over 
the  immense  treasures  of  the  past.  He  writes  a  charming  and 
unanswerable  apologia  for  source-hunting. 

"We  feel  a  sort  of  malicious  triumph  in  detecting  the  latent  and 
obscure  source  from  which  an  original  author  has  drawn  some  celebrated 
description:  yet  this  ....  soon  gives  way  to  the  rapture  that  naturally 
results  from  contemplating  the  chymical  energy  of  true  genius,  which  can 
produce  so  noble  a  transmutation." 

With  Spenser's  stanza  Warton  is  almost  as  unsympathetic  as 
Jonson,  Davenant,  and  an  occasional  Augustan  who  happened  to 
dislike  it.  Its  "constraint  led  our  author  into  many  absurdi- 
ties," 'Ho  dilate  with  trifling  and  tedious  circumlocutions,"  to 
run  "into  a  ridiculous  redundancy  and  repetition  of  words." 
Warton  was  plainly  blind  to  some  of  Spenser's  most  graceful 
artifices.  Yet  he  realizes  certain  advantages.  The  stanza,  for 
instance,  causes  fullness  of  details.  "Some  images,"  he  writes, 
"perhaps  were  produced  by  a  multiplicity  of  rhymes."  Dry  den 
is  quoted  as  saying  that  a  rhyme  often  helped  him  to  a  thought. 
Spenser's  extraordinary  virtuosity  is  praised,  but  he  is  described 
as  "laden  with  ....  many  shackles."  Spenser's  archaisms 
receive  sensible  and  sympathetic  treatment.  But  with  an  Augus- 
tan worship  of  decorous  monotony,  Warton  could  not  see  why 
Spenser  did  not  place  the  caesura  of  his  alexandrines  invariably 
in  the  middle. 

The  tenth  section.  Of  Spenser's  Allegorical  Character,  is  of 
particular  interest.  Warton  borrows  Hughes's  theory  that  it 
was  a  product  of  Spenser's  age,  of  the  pageants  and  spectacles 
which  he  considers  more  like  Spenser's  peculiar  mode  of  allegor- 


4  Chapters  II,  III,  V,  and  VI. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  167 

izing  ''than  any  other  possible  sources."     Spenser's  allegoristic 
method  is  compared  with  Ariosto's  to  the  discredit  of  the  latter. 


much  more  serious  moralist  than  he  really  is).    Warton  follows  /   1  'J 

Spence  in  condemning  justly  the  meaningless  confusions  of  allei )  j/  ti 
gory  and  reality,  like  the  House  of  Alma.    Warton,  after  Spencel  \ 

like  a  good  student  of  Boileau,  attacks  Spenser    for    minglinJ      .  / 

** divine  mystery"  with  human  allegory.  He  gives  the  sam^  ^ 
example  as  Spence,  that  the  Mount  of  Olives  and  Parnassus  are  ly^ 
''impertinently  linked  together."  But  our  critic  decides  "that 
allegorical  poetry,  through  many  gradations,  at  last  received  its 
ultimate  consummation  in  the  Fairy  Queen."  He  concludes 
tamely  by  quoting  "the  just  and  pertinent  sentiments"  of  Abbe 
du  Bos :  »». 


**It  is  impossible  for  a  piece,  whose  subject  is  of  an  allegorical  action 
to  interest  us  very  much.  .  .  .  Our  heart  requires  truth  even  in  fiction 
itself;  and  when  it  is  presented  with  an  allegorical  fiction,  it  cannot 
determine  itself,  if  I  may  be  allowed  the  expression,  to  enter  into  the 
sentiments  of  those  chimerical  personages.'' 

Warton,  poring  too  long  by  a  fatal  minute  over  this  stupid 
Frenchman,  was  made  as  Midas  when  he  heard  Marsyas.  He  could 
not  see  in  Spenser's  allegory  the  magic  that  Gray  saw  with  his 
poet's  eye  when  he  wrote  beautifully  of  The  Faerie  Queene,  of 

'Tierce  war  and  faithful  love. 
And  truth  severe,  by  fairy  fiction  drest. ' ' 

Thomas  Warton  has  been  described  as  apologetic  in  champion- 
ing The  Faerie  Queene.  On  the  contrary,  he  apologizes  in  the 
Postscipt,  like  Spence,  for  having  been  ' '  more  diligent  in  remark- 
ing the  faults  than  the  beauties  of  Spenser."  There  was  no 
necessity  for  a  defence  of  The  Faerie  Queene.  Wliarton  was 
enabled  to  take  many  excellent  ideas  from  Augustan  critics  of 
Spenser.  He  did  not  often  fall  into  their  absurdities.  But  he 
united  their  soundest  principles  to  the  historical  method  and 
to  something  of  the  romantic  spirit.  It  was  this  jast,  this  spirit 
of  childlike  wonder,  that  led  him  to  close  his  book  with  an  enthus- 
iastic and  delightful  quotation  from  Spenser. 


168  University  of  California  Pudlications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

**The  waies,  through  which  my  weary  steps  I  guyde 
In  this  delightful  land  of  Faery, 
Are  so  exceeding  spacious  and  wyde, 
And  sprinckled  with  such  sweet  variety 
Of  all  that  pleasant  is  to  eare  or  eye, 
That  I,  nigh  ravisht  with  rare  thoughts  delight, 
My  tedious  travell  doe  forget  thereby; 
And  when  I  gin  to  f  eele  decay  of  might. 
It  strength  to  me  supplies,  and  chears  my  dulled  spright. ' ' 

With  Richard  Hurd  (1720-1808)  we  come  to  the  first  import- 
ant critic  of  the  rebellious  school  who  concerns  us.  His  remarks 
on  the  "Plan  and  Conduct"  of  The  Faerie  Queene  open  with  a 
fine  romantic  swagger. 

*' Spenser,  though  he  had  long  been  nourished  with  the  spirit  and  sub- 
stance of  Homer  and  Virgil,  chose  the  times  of  chivalry  for  his  Theme, 
and  Fairy  Land  for  the  Scene  of  his  fictions.  He  could  have  planned,  no 
jjj^ubt,  an  heroick  design  on  the  exact  classic  model:  Or,  he  might  have 
^mmmed  between  the  Gothick  and  Classick  as  his  contemporary  Tasso  did. 
But  the  charms  of  Fairy  prevailed.  And  if  any  think  he  was  seduced  by 
Ariosto  into  his  choice,  they  should  consider  that  it  could  be  only  for  the 
sake  of  his  subject;  for  the  genius  and  character  of  these  poets  was  widely 
different. 

''Under  this  idea  then  of  a  Gothick,  not  classical.  Poem,  the  Faerie 
Queene  is  to  be  read  and  criticised.  And  on  these  principles,  it  would  not 
be  difficult  to  unfold  its  merit  in  another  way  than  has  been  hitherto 
attempted. ' ' 

Hurd  now  becomes  apologetic. 

* '  I  have  taken  the  fancy  to  try  my  hand  on  this  curious  subject. ' ' 

Here  the  apology  of  the  Spenserian  critics  really  begins.  And  it 
is  not  due  to  any  unpopularity  of  Spenser  but  to  the  fact  that 
they  were  advancing  a  somewhat  new  conception  of  him.  We 
have  seen  that  the  neo-classicists  apologized  only  when  they  were 
censuring  Spenser.  The  romanticists  apologized  because  they 
wished  to  link  Spenser  more  closely  with  their  brotherhood.  Hurd 
draws  the  usual  parallel  between  classical  and  Gothic  architec- 
ture, which  had  some  vogue  since  Hughes  ventured  upon  it  as 
throwing  some  light  on  Spenser,  and  adds : 

''The  question  is  not  which  of  the  two  is  conducted  in  the  simplest  or 
truest  taste;  but,  whether  there  be  not  sense  and  design  in  both,  when 
scrutinized   by   the   laws   on   which    each   is   projected.  ...  It    was    as 


1911] 


Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser. 


169 


requisite  for  the  Faerie  Queen  to  consist  of  the  adventures  of  twelve 
knights,  as  for  the  Odyssey  to  be  confined  to  the  adventures  of  one  Hero: 
justice  had  otherwise  not  been  done  to  his  subject. 

"If  it  be  asked  then,  what  is  this  Unity  of  Spenser's  Poem?  I  say, 
it  consists  in  the  relation  of  its  several  adventures  to  one  common  origin, 
the  appointment  of  the  Faerie  Queene;  and  to  one  common  end,  the  com- 
pletion of  the  Faerie  Queene 's  injunctions. ' ' 

This  is  not  urged  as  classical  unity  but  unity  of  another  sort. 
Hurd  thinks  that  the  introduction  of  Arthur  was  a  mere  after- 
thought, an  expedient  from  classical  models  which  narrated  only 
one  action. 

"The  truth  was,  the  violence  of  classick  prejudices  forced  the  poet  to 
affect  this  appearance  of  Unity,  though  in  contradiction  to  his  Gothick 
system. ' ' 

Spenser,  according  to  Hurd,  never  should  have  attempted  to  ally 
the  Gothic  and  the  classical  unities.  It  is  interesting  to  compare 
Hurd  and  the  Augustans  at  this  point.  The  Augustans,  includ- 
ing Warton,  lamented  that  Spenser  was  compelled  by  the  roman- 
tic prejudices  of  his  time  to  follow  the  vicious  example  of  Ariosto. 
Hurd  lamented  that  Spenser  was  compelled  by  the  prejudices  of 
his  time  to  allow  classical  ideals  to  play  havoc  with  his  natural 
Gothic  inclinations. 

Hurd  now  turns  to  an  entirely  different  defence  of  The  Faerie 
Queene,  based  on  its  allegorical  character. 

"His  twelve  knights  are  to  exemplify  as  many  virtues,  out  of  which 
one  illustrious  character  is  to  be  composed.  And  in  this  view,  the  part 
of  Prince  Arthur  in  each  Book  becomes  essential  not  principal,  exactly  as 
the  poet  has  contrived  it."  \  »  * 

Hurd  thinks  the  objection  to  Prince  Arthur  and  the  unity  of  the 
poem  is  unanswerable  on  any  other  grounds. 

"But  how  faulty  soever  this  conduct  be  in  the  literal  story,  it  is  per- 
fectly right  in  the  moral:  and  that  for  an  obvious  reason,  though  his 
criticks  seem  not  to  have  been  aware  of  it.  His  chief  hero  was  not  to 
have  the  twelve  virtues  in  the  degree  in  which  the  knights  had  each  of 
them,  their  own;  (such  a  character  would  be  a  monster;)  but  he  was  to 
have  so  much  of  each  as  were  requisite  to  form  his  superior  character. 
Each  virtue,  in  its  perfection,  is  exemplified  in  its  own  knight:  they 
are  all,  in  a  due  degree  concentered  on  Prince  Arthur. 

"The  conclusion  is,  that,  as  an  allegorical  Poem  the  method  of  the 
Faerie  Queene  is  governed  by  the  justness  of  the  moral:  as  a  narrative 


170  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

Poem,  it  is  conducted  on  the  ideas  and  usages  of  chivalry.  In  either 
view,  if  taken  by  itself,  the  plan  is  defensible.  But  from  the  union  of  the 
two  designs  there  arises  a  perplexity,  and  confusion,  which  is  the  proper, 
and  only  considerable  defect  of  this  extraordinary  Poem. ' ' 

Hurd  now  launches  forth  in  breezy  defence  of  the  Gothic 
method.  Tasso  is  sneered  at  because  ''he  thought  fit  to  trim 
between  Gothic  and  classical  models. ' '  The  French  depreciation 
of  Ariosto  is  roundly  abused.  We  must  remember  that  the  Augus- 
tans  had  patted  Tasso  on  the  back  and  girded  at  Ariosto.  And 
Hurd  scores  *  *  our  obsequious  and  over  modest  critics ' '  for  allow- 
ing themselves  to  be  overridden  by  French  authority. 

''It  grew  into  a  sort  of  cant,  with  which  Kymer,  and  the  rest  of  that 
School,  filled  their  flimsy  essays,  and  rambling  prefaces.  ...  A  lucky 
word  in  a  verse  which  sounds  well  and  everybody  gets  by  heart,  goes 
further  than  a  volume  of  just  criticism.  In  short,  the  exact  but  cold 
Boileau  happened  to  say  something  of  the  clinquant  of  Tasso;  and  the 
magick  of  this  word,  like  the  report  of  Astolfo's  horn  in  Ariosto,  over- 
turned at  once  the  solid  and  well-built  reputation  of  Italian  poetry." 

Hurd  closes  with  an  utterance  of  even  more  glowing  roman- 
ticism that  lifts  him  safely  above  the  jaded  connoisseurs  of 
"Gothick"  of  his  time.  He  defends  the  ''tales  of  the  Faery" 
and  the  fantastic  exploits  of  the  unfettered  imagination  as  the 
greatest  material  for  epic  poetry.  Bad  criticism,  which  had 
relegated  such  matters  to  children,  is  blamed  as  the  result  of  the 
abuse  of  terms. 

"A  poet,  they  say,  must  follow  Nature;  and  by  Nature  we  are 
to  suppose  can  only  be  meant  the  known  and  experienced  course  of 
affairs  in  this  world.  Whereas  the  poet  has  a  world  of  his  own  where 
experience  has  less  to  do  than  consistent  imagination.  .  .  .  Without  ad- 
miration (which  cannot  be  affected  but  by  the  marvellous  of  celestial 
intervention,  I  mean,  the  agency  of  superior  natures  really  existing,  or 
by  the  illusion  of  fancy  taken  to  be  so)  no  epick  poem  can  be  long-lived. 
I  am  not  afraid  to  instance  the  Henriade  itself;  which,  notwithstanding 
the  elegance  of  the  composition,  will  in  a  short  time  be  no  more  read 
than  the  Gondibert  of  Sir  William  Davenant,  and  for  the  same  reason." 

The  "pomp  of  verse,  the  energy  of  description"  and  even  "the 
finest  moral  paintings ' '  will  not  produce  a  great  epic  without  the 
quality  of  "admiration."  By  "admiration,"  I  take  it,  Hurd 
means,  in  a  slightly  more  restricted  sense,  what  Mr.  Theodore 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  171 

Watts-Dunton  means  when  he  characterizes  romanticism  as  the 
spirit  of  "Wonder"  which  revolted  against  the  Augustan  *'Age 
of  Acceptance. ' ' 

Hurd's  last  words  on  Spenser  explain  what  I  have  been  fre- 
quently asserting — that  the  romanticists,  though  they  discovered 
new  beauties  in  Spenser,  became  blind  to  certain  of  the  qualities 
of  The  Faerie  Queene  that  had  long  been  wisely  cherished  by 
Milton  and  by  the  Augustans.  From  the  ridicule  of  chivalry 
and  magic,  thinks  Hurd,  Spenser  was  forced  to  give  ."an  air 
of  mystery  to  his  subject"  and  to  pretend  "that  his  stories  of 
knights  and  giants"  were  but  the  mantle  "of  an  abundance  of 
profound  wisdom." 

*'In  short,  to  keep  off  the  eyes  of  the  prophane  from  prying  too  nearly 
into  his  subject  he  threw  about  it  the  mist  of  allegory. 

**  Fancy  that  had  wantoned  it  so  long  in  the  world  of  fiction  was  now 
constrained,  against  her  will,  to  ally  herself  with  strict  Truth  if  she 
would  gain  admittance  into  reasonable  company. 

"What  we  have  gotten  by  this  revolution,  it  will  be  said,  is  a  great 
deal  of  good  sense.  What  we  have  lost,  is  a  world  of  fine  fabling;  the 
illusion  of  which  is  so  grateful  to  the  charmed  spirit;  that,  in  spite  of 
philosophy  and  fashion.  Faery  Spenser  still  ranks  highest  among  the 
Poets.  I  mean  with  all  those  that  either  come  of  that  house,  or  have  any 
kindness  for  it.     Earth-born  criticks  may  blaspheme: 

'But  all  the  gods  are  ravish 'd  with  delight 
Of  his  celestial  song,  and  musick's  wondrous  might.'  " 

Hurd  merits  the  highest  praise  for  his  spirited  defence  of 
the  romantic  side  of  Spenser.  But,  for  all  his  eloquence,  his 
depreciation  of  Spenser's  allegory  deserves  reproach.  Anyone 
who  reads  Spenser's  contemporaries  in  Italy,  France  and  Eng- 
land can  see  that,  despite  the  rapid  growth  of  Augustan  criticism 
on  the  continent.  Fancy  could  easily  wanton  it  at  her  own  sweet 
will  without  feeling  constained  to  go  masked  in  moral  allegory. 
Spenser  was  not  forced  to  constrain  his  copious  visions  within 
bounds,  but  the  beautiful  high  seriousness  that  always  dwells 
with  the?  greatest  poets  made  him  choose  allegory  uncommanded. 
Hurd  and  most  succeeding  romanticists  have  forgotten  that 
there  is  much  rich  beauty  in  Spenser  of  which  the  moral  alle- 
gory is  the  direct  cause,  that  many  of  the  passages  which  they 


\ 


172  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

admire  cannot  be  cherished  consistently  unless  the  allegory  be 
accepted  as  artistic.  Enthusiasm  for  the  canto  on  Despair,  to 
which  the  coldest  reader  of  Spenser  accords  high  praise,  implies 
enthusiasm  for  the  episode  as  allegory  no  matter  what  fine- 
spun theories  the  reader  chooses  to  flaunt.  The  restraining 
power  and  architectonic  value  of  Spenser's  allegory,  despite  its 
incomplete  working-out,  will  be  apparent  to  any  man  who  reads 
the  Poly-Olhion  of  Drayton  and  the  Britannia's  Pastorals  of 
Browne,  huge  poems  by  men  who  had  much  of  Spenser 's  heaped 
treasures  of  fancy  and  glimmering  lore  but  none  of  the  deeper 
dream  that  strove  to  pour  the  riches  into  the  vast,  the  too  vast, 
mould  of  the  allegory  that  strove  to  erect  that  gorgeous  Utopia 
which  would  have  shaped  and  perfected  even  the  spacious  court 
of  Queen  Elizabeth. 

Among  other  beauties  of  Spenser  which  the  romanticists 
taught  all  England  to  appreciate  fully  for  the  first  time  was 
the  Spenserian  stanza.  It  is  strange  that  it  remained  for  Beattie, 
the  gentle  poetaster  who  was  once  lionized  for  his  Minstrel,  to 
write  the  first  elaborate  and  thoroughly  appreciative  comments 
on  the  marvellous  stanza  which  Spenser  fashioned  subtly  for  his 
Faerie  Queene.  A  letter  to  Dr.  Blacklock  (September  22,  1766), 
reveals  the  placid  Beattie  in  the  process  of  composition. 

**Not  long  ago  I  began  a  poem  in  the  style  and  stanza  of  Spenser,  in 
which  I  propose  to  give  full  scope  to  my  inclination,  and  to  be  either 
droll  or  pathetic,  descriptive  or  sentimental,  tender  or  satirical,  as  the 
humour  strikes  me;  for,  if  I  mistake  not,  the  manner  which  I  have  adopted 
admits  equally  of  all  these  kinds  of  composition.  I  have  written  one 
hundred  and  fifty  lines,  and  am  surprised  to  find  the  structure  of  that 
complicated  stanza  so  little  troublesome.  .  I  was  always  fond  of  it,  for  I 
think  it  the  most  harmonious  that  ever  was  contrived.  It  admits  of  more 
variety  of  pauses  than  either  the  couplet  or  the  alternate  rhyme;  and  it 
concludes  with  a  pomp  and  majesty  of  sound,  which,  to  my  ear,  is  won- 
derfully delightful.  It  seems  also  very  well  adapted  to  the  genius  of  our 
language,  which,  from  its  irregularity  of  inflexion  and  number  of  mono- 
syllables, abounds  in  diversified  terminations,  and  consequently  renders 
our  poetry  susceptible  of  an  endless  variety  of  legitimate  rhymes.  Bnt  I 
am  so  far  from  intending  this  performance  for  the  press,  that  I  am 
morally  certain  it  will  never  be  finished.  I  shall  add  a  stanza  now  and 
then,  when  I  am  at  leisure,  and  when  I  have  no  humour  for  other  amuse- 
ment; but  I  am  resolved  to  write  no  more  poetry  with  a  view  to  publica- 


1911 J  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  173 

tion,  till  I  see  some  dawnings  of  a  poetical  taste  among  the  generality  of 
readers,  of  which,  however,  there  is  not  at  present  anything  like  an 
appearance. ' ' 

Beattie  shows  the  bookish  man 's  ignorance  of  his  times.  The 
public  was  waiting  to  devour  stuff  like  The  Minstrel.  And  when 
he  did  publish  the  first  book,  in  1771,  there  was  a  thunder  of 
applause. 

These  opinions  have  brought  us  well  into  the  camp  of  the 
romanticists,  where  fewer  citations  and  explanations  are  neces- 
sary for  the  reader  of  today.  The  Augustan  attitude  lingered  on 
with  certain  critics,  but  most  men  followed  in  the  wake  of  Hurd. 
We  are  near  enough  oulTown  time  to  conclude  this  long  survey 
of  Spenserian  criticism  with  the  opinions  of  three  of  the  most 
delightful  romantic  admirers  of  Spenser — Sir  Walter  Scott 
(1771-1832),  William  Hazlitt  (1778-1830),  and  Leigh  Hunt 
(1784-1859). 

In  order  thoroughly  to  appreciate  Scott's  attitude  toward 
Spenser  we  must  glance  at  his  poetry  along  with  his  prose.  Like 
many  poets  he  has  left  evidence  of  his  early  delight  in  Spenser, 
to  whose  works  he  was  introduced  by  Dr.  Blacklock. 

''Spenser  I  could  have  read  forever.  Too  young  to  trouble  myself 
about  the  allegory,  I  considered  all  the  knights  and  ladies  and  dragons 
and  giants  in  their  outward  and  exoteric  sense,  and  God  only  knows  how 
delighted  I  was  to  find  myself  in  such  society." 

And  in  the  days  of  his  maturity  Scott's  boyish  appreciation  of 
Spenser  remained  essentially  the  same.  For  Scott  was  always 
a  boy.  Beyond  a  certain  interest  as  a  man  of  affairs  and  an 
antiquarian,  in  Spenser 's  political  allegory,^  he  rather  abandoned 
himself,  like  all  the  full-fledged  romanticists,  to  the  delights  of 
the  rich  succession  of  pictures  that  was  stirred  by  Spenser's 
lofty  purposes.  Scott's  romanticism,  with  its  love  of  antiquar- 
ianism,  was  not  a  strong  spirit  of  rebellion,  nor  even  a  very 
strong  spirit  of  wonder.     Allowing  for  its  immensely  superior 


5  See  his  essay  on  Todd's  edition  of  Spenser  (Edinburgh  Beview,  1805). 
''But  although  everything  belonging  to  the  reign  of  the  Virgin  Queen 
carries  with  it  a  secret  charm  to  Englishmen,  no  commentator  of  the  Faery 
Queen  has  taken  the  trouble  to  go  very  deep  into  those  annals,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  illustrating  the  secret,  and  as  it  were,  esoteric  allusions  of  Spen- 
ser 's  poems. ' ' 


174  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

vigor  and  its  wholesome  scorn  of  introspection,  it  has  something 
in  common  with  the  pretty  trifling  of  Beattie.  Scott's  roman- 
ticism involved  little  more  than  a  change  in  what  the  Augustans 
called  ''machinery."  Take  out  your  pagan  divinities;  put  in 
your  knights.  Add  to  this  a  change  of  landscape.  Describe  a 
mountain  or  forest  scene.  Put  in  an  indispensable  moon  and  a 
castle.  This  was  the  setting,  not  for  the  sentimental  reflections 
of  Beattie,  but  for  the  stirring  narrative  and  ring  so  like  the  old 
ballad  that  Matthew  Arnold  has  well  called  it  the  only  English 
equivalent  of  Homer. 

What  Scott  found  in  Spenser  was  the  dim  forest,  the  furtive 
flash  of  armor  as  the  sun  stole  through  at  intervals,  silent  maidens 
who  were  to  Scott  mere  vague  flowers  of  mediaeval  landscape, 
and  ever  and  anon  a  great  castle  upleaping  unexpectedly  in  the 
silver  winding  path.  Even  in  the  breathless  flow  of  his  narra- 
tive Scott  delighted  to  pause  and  to  consider  these  lovely  scenes. 
So  he  hit  upon  the  happy  device  of  using  Spenser  in  a  rather 
novel  way.  In  almost  all  his  narrative  poems  he  introduced 
Spenserian  stanzas,  generally  at  the  opening  of  his  cantos,  to 
make  a  setting  before  the  quick  beat  of  the  free  tetrameters 
called  to  arms.  He  showed  a  relic  of  Augustan- Spenser ianism 
by  occasionally  employing  the  stanza  of  The  Faerie  Queene  for  a 
moralistic  prelude  or  interlude,  as  the  master  himself  did.  Fin- 
ally he  strewed  his  narrative  with  allusions  to  the  beautiful  pic- 
tures in  The  Faerie  Queene.  In  some  of  his  later  poems  the 
influence  of  Byron 's  Childe  Harold  tinged  his  introductory  Spen- 
serian stanzas.  But,  in  general,  the  landscapes  thus  introduced 
are  not  disturbed  by  the  more  personal,  stormier  note  of  Byron. 
Almost  any  of  these  stanzas  taken  at  random  will  illustrate.  The 
idyllic  scenes  on  the  island  in  the  second  canto  of  The  Lady  of 
the  Lake  are  introduced  by  a  charming  setting. 
"At  morn  the  black-cock  trims  his  jetty  wing  , 

'Tis  morning  prompts  the  linnet's  blithest  lay. 

All  Nature's  children  feel  the  matin  spring 

Of  life  reviving,  with  reviving  day; 

And  while  yon  little  bark  glides  down  the  bay, 

Wafting  the  stranger  on  his  way  again. 

And  sweetly  o'er  the  lake  was  heard  thy  strain, 
Mix'd  with  the  sounding  harp,  O  white-hair 'd  Allan-Bane." 


1911]  Cory:  The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  175 

The  Spenserian  allusions,  with  which  the  Ariosto  of  the 
North,  ever  haunted  by  visions  of  The  Faerie  Queene,  strewed 
richly  his  poems,  may  be  illustrated  by  a  passage  from  Marmion 
which  conjures  up  scenes  with  the  delight  of  a  child  rocking  him- 
self into  ecstasy  by  a  fire-place  and  recalling  his  store  of  fairy- 
tales. 

''Not  she,  the  championess  of  old, 

In  Spenser's  magic  tale  enroll 'd, 

She,  for  the  charmed  spear  renown 'd. 

Which  forced  each  knight  to  kiss  the  ground, — 

Not  she  more  changed,  when,  placed  at  rest, 

What  time  she  was  Malbecco's  guest, 

She  gave  to  flow  her  maiden  vest; 

When  from  the  corslet's  grasp  relieved, 

Free  to  the  sight  her  bosom  heaved; 

Sweet  was  her  blue  eye's  honest  smile, 

Erst  hidden  by  the  aventayle; 

And  down  her  shoulders  gracefull  roU'd, 

Her  locks  profuse,  of  paly  gold. 

They  who  whilom,  in  midnight  fight. 

Had  marvell'd  at  her  matchless  might,  ^ 

No  less  her  maiden  charms  approved. 

But  looking  liked,  and  liking  loved. 

The  sight  could  jealous  pangs  beguile. 

And  charm  Malbecco's  cares  a  while; 

And  he^he  wandering  Squire  of  Dames, 

Forgot  his  Columbella  's  claims. 

And  passion,  erst  unknown,  could  gain 

The  breast  of  blunt  Sir  Satyrane; 

Nor  durst  light  Paridel  advance. 

Bold  as  he  was,  a  looser  glance. 

She  charmed  at  once,  and  tamed  the  heart, 

Incomparable  Britomarte!  " 

Thus,  too,  The  Vision  of  Don  Roderick  closes  with  Spenser's 

favorite  figurative  method  of  saying  adieu. 

"But  all  too  long,  through  seas  unknown  and  dark, 
(With  Spenser's  parable  I  close  my  tale,) 
By  shoal  and  rocks  hath  steer 'd  my  venturous  bark, 
And  landward  now  I  drive  before  the  gale. 
And  now  the  blue  and  distant  shore  I  hail. 
And  nearer  now  I  see  the  port  expand. 
And  now  I  gladly  furl  my  weary  sail. 
And  as  the  prow  light  touches  on  the  strand, 
I  strike  my  red-cross  flag  and  bind  my  skiff  to  land. ' ' 


176  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

Scott  was  always  a  hearty,  delighted  boy  and  this  lovable 
trait  is  no  better  illustrated  than  in  his  Spenser-worship. 

The  beautiful  things  in  Spenser  were  ever  straying  in  some 
convenient  corner  of  Hazlitt's  mind.  Hazlitt  shares  with  Byron 
in  Don  Juan  the  supreme  honors  in  English  literature  for  the 
mastery  of  the  fine  art  of  quoting.  So  adroitly  does  Hazlitt  slip 
a  fine  phrase  or  verse  from  a  beloved  writer  into  the  rich  tex- 
ture of  his  own  prose  that  he  becomes  a  second  creator,  as  great 
as  the  first,  and  we  forget  that  it  was  merely  quoted.  This  is 
one  of  the  most  effective  and  difficult  of  stylistic  tricks.  Hazlitt 
quoted  Spenser  a  propos  of  things  in  general,  often  very  quaintly. 
* '  We  felt  as  much  disconcerted, ' '  he  writes,  ' '  by  the  uncalled  for 
phrensy  of  this  theatrical  Amazon,  as  the  Squire  of  Dames  in 
Spenser  did,  when  he  was  carried  off  by  the  giantess  Orgygia." 
Coleridge's  Lay  Sermon  reminded  him  of  "A  gentle  husher 
Vanitie  by  name.^' 

Hazlitt  certainly  penned  the  most  brilliant  detached  com- 
ments on  Spenser  ever  written.  ''The  essence  of  Spenser's 
poetry,"  he  tells  us,  ''was  a  continuous,  endless  flow  of  inde- 
scribable beauties  like  the  galaxy  or  milky  way. ' '  He  says  pene- 
trating things  about  the  vexed  question  of  Spenser 's  passion. 

''But  he  has  been  unjustly  charged  with  a  want  of  passion  and  of 
strength.  He  has  both  in  an  immense  degree.  He  has  not  indeed  the 
pathos  of  immediate  action  or  suffering,  which  is  more  properly  the 
dramatic;  but  he  has  all  the  pathos  of  sentiment  and  romance — all  that 
belongs  to  distant  objects  of  terror,  and  uncertain,  imaginary  distress. ' ' 

After  all  the  endless  talk  about  Ariosto  and  Spenser,  Hazlitt 
makes  the  best  comparison  ever  written. 

''If  Ariosto  transports  us  into  regions  of  romance,  Spenser's  poetry  is 
all  fairy-land.  In  Ariosto  we  walk  upon  the  ground,  in  a  company,  gay, 
fantastic,  and  adventurous  enough.  In  Spenser,  we  wander  in  another 
world,  among  ideal  beings.  The  poet  takes  us  and  lays  us  in  the  lap  of 
a  lovelier  nature,  by  the  sound  of  softer  streams,  among  greener  hills  and 
fairer  valleys.  He  paints  nature,  not  as  we  find  it,  but  as  we  expected  to 
find  it,  and  fulfills  the  delightful  promise  of  our  youth. ' ' 

Hazlitt  is  quaintly  non-committal  on  the  problem  of  Spenser's 
allegory. 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  177 

' '  But  some  people  will  say  that  all  this  may  be  very  fine,  but  that  they 
cannot  understand  it  on  account  of  the  allegory.  They  are  afraid  of  the 
allegory,  as  if  they  thought  it  would  bite  them:  they  look  at  it  as  a  child 
looks  at  a  painted  dragon,  and  think  it  will  strangle  them  in  its  shining 
folds.  This  is  very  idle.  If  they  do  not  meddle  with  the  allegory,  the 
allegory  will  not  meddle  with  them.  Without  minding  it  at  all,  the  whole 
is  as  plain  as  a  pike-staff." 

Hazlitt  was  a  literary  epicurean,  the  product  of  the  romantic 
attitude  toward  Spenser,  who  has  done  incalculable  good  for  the 
master  and  yet  has  encouraged  men  to  take  The  Faerie  Queene  as 
an  intellectual  anesthetic  (if  they  are  not  unfortunate  enough 
to  have  taken  it  as  a  soporific).  If  we  tempered  our  Hazlitt  and 
all  the  romanticists  with  Milton,  Dryden,  and  Addison  for  an 
antidote,  then  we  should  get  the  perfect  conception  of  Spenser. 
But  I  must  leave  the  reader  with  a  relish  of  Hazlitt  rather  than 
of  my  polemics. 

*'In  reading  the  Faery  Queene,  you  see  a  little  withered  old  man  by  a 
wood-side  opening  a  wicket,  a  giant  and  a  dwarf  lagging  far  behind,  a 
damsel  in  a  boat  upon  an  enchanted  lake,  wood-nymphs,  and  satyrs;  and 
all  of  a  sudden  you  are  transported  into  a  lofty  palace,  with  tapers  burn- 
ing, amid  knights  and  ladies,  with  dance  and  revelry  and  song,  '  and  mask, 
and  antique  pageantry. '  ' ' 

From  boyhood  to  the  days  of  his  sunny  maturity,  when  he 
poured  out  his  graceful  garrulous  essays,  Spenser  haunted  Leigh 
Hunt  like  a  passion.  He  tells  us,  in  his  Autobiography,  that  he 
secured  an  odd  volume  of  Spenser  at  Christ's  Hospital  and  com- 
completed  about  a  hundred  stanzas  called  The  Fairy  King  which 
**was  to  be  in  emulation  of  Spenser."  From  that  time  Spenser 
was  his  favorite  among  all  poets.  In  1801  he  published  his 
Juvenilia,  or  a  Collection  of  Poems,  Written  between  the  Ages  of 
Twelve  and  Sixteen.  The  most  ambitious  poem  is  The  Palace  of 
Pleasure;  An  Allegorical  Poem  in  Two  Cantos.  Written  in  Imita- 
tion of  Spenser.  His  epicurean  Story  of  Bimini  (1816),  so  im- 
portant in  the  history  of  nineteenth  century  romanticism, 
shows  the  influence  of  Spenser,  the  sensuous  builder  of  the  Bower 
of  Bliss,  both  for  better  and  for  worse.  But  in  his  beautiful 
essay,  Imagination  and  Fancy,  we  find  the  key-note  of  Hunt's 


\ 


178  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

attitude  toward  Spenser.  Here  he  furnishes  a  wonderful  pic- 
ture-gallery. He  compares  scene  after  scene  of  concentrated 
loveliness  with  some  appropriate  picture  which  hangs  in  the 
great  galleries  of  Europe.  No  book  could  be  more  perfect  to 
teach  both  youth  and  crabbed  age  to  love  Spenser.  Yet  I  must 
be  ungracious  enough  to  charge  Hunt  with  a  good  deal  of  respon- 
sibility for  the  common  conception  current  today  of  Spenser  as 
a  pictorial  poet  and  nothing  more.  Spenser 's  pictures  have  been 
admired  till  he  is  given  absolutely  no  credit  as  a  writer  of  narra- 
tive. This  is  absurd  extreme.  Had  Hunt  appreciated  some  of 
Spenser's  larger  qualities,  his  own  verse  would  doubtless  have 
been  less  saccharine  and  spineless.  But  it  seems  almost  sacri- 
legious to  quarrel  with  this  charming  old  literary  epicurean. 
How  eloquently  he  could  write  of  Spenser  may  be  seen  in  one 
short  apostrophe. 

**  Around  us  are  the  woods;  in  our  distant  ear  is  the  sea;  the  glimmer- 
ing forms  that  we  behold  are  those  of  nymphs  and  deities;  or  a  hermit 
makes  the  loneliness  onore  lonely;  or  we  hear  a  horn  blow,  and  the 
ground  trembling  with  the  coming  of  a  giant;  and  our  boyhood  is  again 
existing,  full  of  belief,  though  its  hair  be  turning  grey;  because  thou,  a 
man,  hast  written  its  books,  and  proved  the  surpassing  riches  of  its 
wisdom. ' ' 


A  catalogue  of  later  opinions  is  unnecessary.  We  all  know 
the  current  notions  about  Spenser.  Endless  are  the  pale  com- 
ments of  writers  of  text-books  who  have  bolted  The  Faerie  Queene 
with  all  the  terrifying  velocity  with  which  the  ghastly  Americans 
in  Martin  Chuzzleivit  devoured  their  dinner — ''in  huge  wedges." 
A  few  words  about  Spenser's  worship  of  beauty,  a  fling  at  his 
allegory,  and  the  necessary  paragraphs  in  any  proper  history  of 
English  literature  are  complete.  Such  is  the  baneful  influence 
of  the  literary  epicureanism  of  Hurd,  Scott,  Leigh  Hunt,  and 
other  brilliant  writers  whose  utterances  culminate  in  Lowell's 
glowing  but  dangerous  essay  on  Spenser,  which,  with  all  its  real 
appreciation  of  one  side  of  the  master's  genius,  has  had  a  blight- 
ing influence  on  many.  Professor  Dowden,  whose  perfect  essay 
on  Spenser  will  be  mentioned  presently,  has  conveniently  com- 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  179 

pressed  the  splendid  Luciferian  assertions  of  Lowell  into  a  para- 
graph. 

'*A  teacher, — what  is  the  import  of  this?  'The  true  use  of  Spenser,' 
says  a  poet  of  our  own  day,  Mr.  J.  E.  Lowell,  'is  as  a  gallery  of  pictures 
which  we  visit  as  the  mood  takes  us,  and  where  we  spend  an  hour  or  two 
at  a  time,  long  enough  to  sweeten  our  perceptions,  not  so  long  as  to 
cloy  them.'  And  again:  'Whenever  in  the  Faery  Queen  you  come  sud- 
denly on  the  moral,  it  gives  you  a  shock  of  unpleasant  surprise,  a  kind 
of  grit,  as  when  one's  teeth  close  on  a  bit  of  gravel  in  a  dish  of  straw- 
berries and  cream.'  This,  then,  is  the  Faery  Queen — a  dish  of  straw- 
berries and  cream  mixed  up  unfortunately  with  a  good  deal  of  grit.  '  And 
as  for  the  allegory,  we  may  'fairly  leave  it  on  one  side; '  Spenser  employed 
it  to  'convince  the  scorners  that  poetry  might  be  seriously  useful,  and 
show  Master  Bull  his  new  way  of  making  fine  words  butter  parsnips,  in 
a  rhymed  moral  primer.'  Shall  we  accept  this  view,  or  that  of  Milton— 
'a  better  teacher  than  Scotus  or  Aquinas?'  Was  Spenser  such  a  teacher 
'sage  and  serious'  to  his  own  age?  If  so,  does  he  remain  such  a  teacher 
for  this  age  of  ours?" 

This  age  of  ours,  about  which  Professor  Dowden  has  his  fears, 
is  too  much  devoted  to  the  doctrine  of  Art  for  Art 's  sake  to  be  in 
harmony  with  the  ideals  of  Spenser  and  ]\Iilton.  Poets  who  are 
ineffectually  concerned  with  pale,  anaemic  Isoldes  gazing  sadly 
into  the  solitary  West  cannot  understand  the  full  beauty  of  fig- 
ures like  Una,  who  symbolizes  Truth.  They  onl^  admir^the 
colors,  not  the  exquisite  lines  of  the  picture.  Had  they  Spenser's 
richer  view,  their  poetry  would  not  so  often  confuse  the  white- 
ness of  beauty  with  the  preternatural  whiteness  of  leprosy.  They 
are  for  all  the  world  like  the  exclusive  and  selfish  people  in  Boc- 
caccio who  assembled  in  rural  sequestration  to  divert  each  other 
with  stories  while  their  comrades  in  the  city  groaned  with  the 
plague  and  stretched  out  imploring  hands  for  help.  If  you  make 
poetry  the  gilded  plaything  of  an  exclusive  and  esoteric  cult,  you 
are  doing  as  did  Boccaccio 's  fine  lords  and  ladies.  You  will  have 
none  of  the  humanity  of  the  Man  of  Law  and  the  Prioress,  you 
will  have  none  of  the  high  poetry  of  the  Knight  and  the  Squire. 
Spenser  studied  Plato  and  knew  Sidney.  Therefore  he  had  a 
profound  understanding  of  the  function  of  poetry. 

Our  present-day  romanticists  sometimes  look  upon  Spenser 
askance  because  of  his  idealism  and  sum  it  up  with  the  accusa- 


180  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

tion  that  he  has  no  human  interest.  They  think  this  because 
present-day  romanticism  often  means  the  reverse  of  idealism. 
Many  people  who  would  be  realistic,  yet  who  have  romantic 
tastes,  gratify  their  love  of  mystery  and  sensation  by  realistic 
studies  of  pathological  cases.  Sentimentalism  so  intimately  con- 
nected with  the  first  years  of  romanticism  as  it  rose  in  its  glori- 
ous youth  and  smote  the  dead  ideals  of  Acceptance  is  now  held  in 
disrepute  not  only  by  the  commercialists,  with  their  rule-of- 
thumb  realism,  but  by  the  most  adventurous  romanticists.  The 
later-day  romanticists,  with  a  false  sense  of  shame,  have  hard- 
ened themselves  against  it.  Nowadays,  for  instance,  an  orthodox 
musician  does  not  dare  to  admire  the  sweet,  wholesome  roman- 
ticism of  Mendelssohn.  The  lover  of  poetry  who  prefers  the 
gentle  pensiveness  of  Longfellow  to  Poe's  inarticulate  Ulalume 
is  considered  senile.  It  is  certainly  true  that  contemporary 
romanticists  need  a  revival  of  sentimentalism  as  badly  as  the 
eighteenth  century,  though  for  a  different  reason.  The  Augus- 
tans  were  hard  because  they  believed  in  repression  and  glittering 
reason.  Present-day  romanticists  are  hard  because  they  are 
jaded  and  do  not  respond  to  normal  emotions. 

And  better  for  us  than  sentimentalism  would  be  the  beautiful 
idealism  of  Edmund  Spenser.  His  sweet  leisureliness  would 
cure  us  of  our  literary  dyspepsia  induced  by  our  breathless  short- 
story  technique  which  we  admire  with  such  blind  exclusiveness. 
His  profound  moral  consciousness  would  impress  us  again  with 
the  high  function  of  poetry  and  make  us  laugh  at  Art  for  Art's 
sake. 

But  I  would  close  in  a  major  key.  As  it  has  always  been  so, , 
we  can  boast  of  a  few  critics  who  have  written  great  essays  on 
Spenser.  I  should  like  space  to  dilate  on  the  rare  essays  of  that 
fine-souled  poet  Aubrey  de  Vere  with  their  sober  and  profound 
adoration  of  the  qualities  that  run  deep  in  Spenser.  I  should 
like  to  plunder  from  the  many  fervid  passages  that  Professor 
Saintsbury,  one  of  the  truest  of  Spenser's  champions,  has  drawn 
from  his  perennial  contagious  enthusiasm.  But  I  must  confine 
myself  to  what  I  believe  to  be  the  greatest  essay  on  Spenser  ever 


1911]  Cory:   The  Critics  of  Edmund  Spenser.  181 

written,  to  Professor  Edward  Dowden's  Spenser,  the  Poet  and  } 
Teacher.  Since  Warton's  Observations  on  the  Faery  Queene,  I 
know  of  nothing  so  many-sided  and  so  near  the  ideal  method 
which  I  have  advocated  at  the  cost  of  so  much  dull  pedantry  and 
raucous  polemic.  Now,  at  last,  I  will  gladly  disappear  and  leave 
the  rostrum  to  Professor  Dowden. 

"In  England  of  the  age  of  Elizabeth  what  place  is  filled  by  the 
poetry  of  Spenser?  What  blank  would  be  made  by  its  disappearance? 
In  what,  for  each  of  us  who  love  that  poetry  resides  its  special  virtue? 
Shall  we  say  in  answer  to  these  questions  that  Spenser  is  the  weaver  of 
spells,  the  creator  of  illusions,  the  enchanter  of  the  Elizabethan  age;  and 
that  his  name  is  to  us  a  word  of  magic  by  which  we  conjure  away  the 
pain  of  actual  life,  and  obtain  entrance  into  a  world  of  faery?  Was 
Spenser,  as  a  poet  of  our  own  time  names  himself,  'the  idle  singer'  of 
his  day — that  day  not  indeed  'an  empty  day,'  but  one  filled  with  heroic 
daring  and  achievement?  While  Ealeigh  was  exploring  strange  streams 
of  the  New  World,  while  Drake  was  chasing  the  Spaniard,  while  Bacon 
was  seeking  for  the  principles  of  a  philosophy  which  should  enrich  man's 
life,  while  Hooker,  with  the  care  of  a  wise  master-builder,  was  laying  the 
foundation  of  polity  in  the  National  Church,  where  was  Spenser?  Was 
he  forgetful  of  England,  forgetful  of  earth,  lulled  and  lying  in  some 
bower  of  fantasy,  or  moving  in  a  dream  among  imaginary  champions  of 
chivalry,  distressed  damsels,  giants  and  dragons  and  satyrs  and  savage 
men,  or  shepherds  who  pipe  and  shepherdesses  who  dance  forever  in  a 
serene  Arcady? 

''Assuredly  it  was  not  thus  that  a  great  Englishman  of  a  later  age 
thought  of  Spenser.  When  Milton  entered  upon  his  manhood,  he  entered 
upon  a  warfare;  the  peaceful  days,  days  of  happy  ingathering  of  varied 
culture,  days  of  sweet  repose  amid  rural  beauty,  were  past  and  gone;  and 
he  stood  with  loins  girt,  prepared  for  battle  in  behalf  of  liberty.  And 
then,  in  London,  when  London  was  a  vast  arsenal  in  which  weapons  were 
forging  for  the  defence  of  truth  and  freedom,  Milton  in  his  moment  of 
highest  and  most  masculine  ardour,  as  he  wrote  his  speech  on  behalf  of 
unlicensed  printing,  thought  of  Spenser.  It  was  not  as  a  dreamer  that 
Milton  thought  of  him.  Spenser  had  been  a  power  with  himself  in  youth, 
when  he,  'the  lady  of  his  college,'  but  such  a  lady  as  we  read  of  in 
'Comus,'  grew  in  virginal  beauty  and  virginal  strength.  He  had  listened 
to  Spenser's  'sage  and  solemn  tunes,' 

'Of  turneys  and  of  trophies  hung; 
Of  forests  and  enchantments  drear. 
Where  more  is  meant  than  meets  the  ear. ' 

And  now,  in  his  manhood,  when  all  of  life  had  grown  for  him  so  grave, 
so  glorious  with  heroic  effort,  Milton  looks  back  and  remembers  his 
master,  and  he  remembers  him  not  as  an  idle  singer,  not  as  a  dreamer  of 


y^ 


182  University  of  California  Publications  in  Modern  Philology.     [Vol.  2 

dreams,  but  as  'our  sage  and  serious  Spenser,  whom  I  dare  to  name  a 
better  teacher  than  Scotus  or  Aquinas. ' 

**  *A  better  teacher  than  Scotus  or  Aquinas.'  Yet  we  are  told  by  the 
Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  that  in  giving  himself  credit  for  a  direct  purpose  to 
instruct,  Spenser  'only  conformed  to  the  utilitarian  spirit  which  pervaded 
^  the  literature  of  the  time.'  It  is  the  heresy  of  modern  art  that  only 
useless  things  should  be  made  beautiful.  We  want  beauty  only  in  play- 
things. In  elder  days  the  armour  of  a  knight  was  as  beautiful  as  sunlight, 
or  as  flowers.  'In  unaffected,  unconscious,  artistic  excellence  of  inven- 
tion,' says  one  of  our  chief  living  painters,  'approaching  more  nearly  to 
the  strange  beauty  of  nature,  especially  in  vegetation,  mediaeval  armour 
perhaps  surpasses  any  other  effort  of  human  ingenuity. '  i  What  if  Spenser 
wrought  armour  for  the  soul,  and,  because  it  was  precious  and  of  finest 
temper,  made  it  fair  to  look  upon?  That  which  gleams  as  bright  as  the 
waters  of  a  sunlit  lake  is  perhaps  a  breastplate  to  protect  the  heart;  that 
which  appears  pliant  as  the  blades  of  summer  grass  may  prove  at  our  need 
to  be  a  sword  of  steel. ' '  ") 


Transmitted  September  27,  1910. 


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